Renewable Energy

Kyocera has moved into the PV generation business by announcing plans to procure surplus solar from owners of rooftop PV systems in Japan, so it can provide it to businesses through power purchase agreements (PPAs).

An international research team has examined the potential use of hybrid microgrids that integrate PV and biogas for electric vehicle recharging in Karnataka, India. Their findings indicate that this combined approach offers economic and environmental benefits compared to separate biogas and PV systems.

In a new weekly update for pv magazine, Solcast, a DNV company, reports that Germany and Central Europe saw their highest September irradiances in at least 17 years, due to an ‘Omega block’ weather pattern, which kept high pressure stuck over Central Europe, leading to consistently clear skies there, but pushed cloud and storms southward.

Malakoff and MMC Group have agreed to deploy 500 MW of solar in Malaysia, while Citicore has agreed to supply 7.5 MW of solar to utility Clark Electric Distribution Corp. in the Philippines.

The Luxembourg Ministry of Energy has allocated 52.7 MW in an agrivoltaics tender. While the final prices from the procurement exercise have not been disclosed, the ministry said it considered ecological and agricultural factors.

The Yemeni government and the UN Development Programme (UNDP) are now accepting proposals from developers for four solar projects, ranging from street lighting to a 300 kW array.

Fraunhofer Institute for Solar Energy Systems (Fraunhofer ISE) is investigating the impact of floating PV systems on oxygen levels and water temperature. The study is focused on determining whether floating PV systems, deployed by Erdgas Südwest in southern Germany, have altered the lake’s thermal stratification and oxygen content.

A group of scientists in the United States saw ‘encouraging’ results after testing the commercialization of novel coating materials in field tests, with the coating only increasing a panel’s total cost by 1.4%.

New figures provided to pv magazine by Rystad Energy reveal that the amount of unsold panels in European warehouses may have more then doubled between mid-July and the end of August, and that it may reach 100 GW by the end of the year. Analyst Marius Mordal Bakke explained that PERC modules bought and stored by a European distributor for $0.23/W in March are now facing an average spot price of $0.16/W today, which could very likely be $0.15/W next month.

A new study commissioned by Conservative Texans for Energy Innovation, Advanced Power Alliance and the Solar Energy Industries Association looks at market trends near six utility-scale solar projects.