rooftop solar

New research on the PV markets of the four countries forming the so-called Visegrad Group has confirmed that solar prosumers are driven primarily by economic interests rather than environmental concerns. The scientists coined the concept of “energy self-defense” to define all those behaviors that push homeowners to resort to PV in attempt to address price shocks.

Scientists in Iran have developed a novel framework to optimize the capacity of PV and battery storage in smart homes, using a two-stage stochastic programming model. They considered the uncertainties in the grid, market price, and PV output, while also looking at different operation cases.

Turkey has installed about 7.6 GW of new solar capacity over the past year, driven largely by rising electricity prices and expanding uptake of net metering by commercial and industrial (C&I) consumers, Solar3GW President Yusuf Bahadir Turhan tells pv magazine.

Norway has introduced fiscal incentives for commercial and industrial (C&I) energy communities, exempting solar power sharing within a single industrial site from electricity taxes and grid fees.

An international research group has investigated how PV-powered heat pumps and district heating could be combined to heat a multi-apartment building in Sweden and have found that, of the three combinations they evaluated, relying on heat pumps as the primary heat source was the “most beneficial solution” in terms of operating costs and environmental impact.

The Malaysian authorities say that approximately 1.7 GW of PV systems are operating under the Malaysian Building Integrated Photovoltaic (MBIPV) scheme and the country’s three Net Energy Metering (NEM) programs.

A castle in Bavaria, Germany, has installed a brick-red PV system using colored solar modules from Italy-based FuturaSun. The project was enabled by a recent amendment to Bavaria’s Monument Protection Act, allowing solar on heritage buildings.

K2 Systems has introduced two new pitched roof mounting components for residential solar: the SingleHook 3S Light, made of aluminum and stainless steel, and the InsertionRail 2.0, an aluminum mounting rail.

Israel has introduced requirements for PV system installations on all new non-residential buildings with rooftop areas above 250 square meters and new detached residential buildings with roofs larger than 100 square meters.

IEA PVPS Task 16 recently introduced SolarStations.org, a global catalogue of solar irradiance monitoring stations designed for researchers, developers, and policymakers. This openly available resource catalogues more than 800 multi-component stations –of which more than 400 are currently active – offering a comprehensive view of high-quality ground-based solar data.