Rooftop PV

After several year of stalled and failed projects, Zimbabwe’s government is now seeking to implement existing projects, and to get rid of licensed projects that have never been realized. The first attempt will be pushing forward the 100 MW Gwanda solar project, which had been awarded to Intratek in 2015. The government is further planning to grant incentives to rooftop PV under net metering.

The procurements relate to self-consumption projects with a generation capacity of 100 kW-1 MW. The next tender will be launched in September and will allocate 25 MW of solar capacity. The tenders had been suspended because of low interest and disproportionately high final tariffs for surplus power injected into the grid.

Two reports have concluded rooftop solar may replace PV parks as the main growth driver in the two big Asian markets over the next decade. Support programs for utility scale PV in both countries no longer seem attractive enough.

By providing solar-plus-storage, contracting to supply capacity in wholesale markets and even considering microgrid communities, Sunrun is taking on more of the space traditionally occupied by utilities and large, centralized power generators.

New PV installations under the nation’s net metering scheme grew 137% year-on-year from January to March, according to consultancy Greener, and module imports registered even greater growth, signalling activity in the distributed generation segment is increasing at a faster pace. With the regulator mooting changes to the net metering regime, however, it may reflect customers rushing to secure current tariffs.

The Solarville project, by Ikea’s Danish research and design laboratory, has seen the participation of blockchain companies such as Bloc, Blocktech, WeMoveIdeas India and Temporal. It was conceived to help create cooperative community micro-grids to enable homeowners to become clean energy traders.

The system is said to have a maximum estimation error of less than 10% and to reduce the computational requirements for calculating the output of PV systems in complex environments. The approach is based on the correlation between a skyline profile and the annual irradiation received at a particular spot.

At the end of another year or record rooftop PV installations, national Minister for Energy Angus Taylor warns Australian state governments to “consider the potential risks” of rapid solar industry growth.

A new analysis by Credit Suisse forecasts that installed residential solar capacity in the United States could grow more than 3x to reach 41 GW by 2025, and shows that there is plenty of space on rooftops to do this.