Coupling balcony solar panels with residential storage
South Korean researchers have tested four operational modes to combine residential batteries with balcony PV modules and have found that the best configuration is when solar is supplied to the load after the battery is fully charged. Charging the battery with the grid prevents the risk of full discharge in the absence of PV power, they said.
Megawatt-scale, solar-powered EV truck charging
WattEV will build 1 MW solar-powered chargers to deliver 320 miles (515 km) of range to Class 8, 80,000-pound trucks in 30 minutes.
SDN opens heterojunction module factory in South Korea
Planned to be located in Gwangju, in southwestern Korea, the new factory is expected to reach a capacity of 385 MW and to produce 550 W panels.
Ecuador announces renewables auctions, plans to allocate 1 GW
Ecuador plans to launch a 500 MW procurement exercise in November.
Off-grid data center powered exclusively by PV in Australia
Edge Centres – a data center operator based in Queensland, Australia – has announced its first off-grid, 100% solar-powered facility in the state of Victoria.
Indian PV manufacturer expands panel capacity with new 700 MW factory
Insolation Energy Director Vikas Jain recently spoke to pv magazine about the company’s plans to expand its solar panel manufacturing capacity to 700 MW with the addition of a 500 MW facility. The new factory will be equipped to produce poly, mono, mono PERC, and bifacial panels, with individual outputs of up to 600 Wp.
Price increases hit US solar as trade uncertainties with China cloud growth goals
Price increases, supply chain disruptions, and a series of trade risks are threatening the U.S.’s ability to decarbonize the grid, warned SEIA president and CEO Abigail Ross Hopper.
Chinese PV Industry Brief: Rising wafer prices and a big tracker order
AntaiSolar has secured a 400 MW contract from Ningxia Jiayang Energy and Longi has raised the prices of all its wafers. Elsewhere, GCL New Energy has announced the sale of another 198 MW of project capacity.
Agrivoltaics to protect crops from heavy rainfall
BayWa r.e. and the Fraunhofer Institute for Solar Energy Systems ISE have built a 258 kW agrivoltaic system that hosts apple cultivation under four different crop protection systems. The system utilizes agrivoltaic technology with permanent, light-permeable PV modules that block rain, and tracking PV module tech that blocks rain only if necessary.
Solaria unveils 430 W pure black residential solar panel
The new residential module of the U.S.-based manufacturer has a power conversion efficiency of 20.40%, a size of 1,076×1,957x35mm, and a weight of 21.3kg. The product is claimed to be compatible with next-generation, module-level power electronics.
