Solar Power

Chinese solar module manufacturer Trina Solar has listed eight solar tracking system manufacturers that have made their products compatible with solar panels based on 210mm silicon wafers. Two weeks earlier, the company had unveiled all inverter makers that already provide compatible devices.

JMK Research expects strong growth in the large-scale solar business in India this year, due to strong growth in module and inverter shipments in the fourth quarter of 2020. Around 5.7 GW of new solar plants should be grid-connected in the first half of the year.

In the middle of Australia’s most iconic natural landscape, the township of Jabiru has begun its transition from a uranium-mine support community, to an Indigenous cultural hub and tourism center. The local arm of German renewable energy pioneer, juwi, brings its deep experience in off-grid power systems to the project.

In the category for PV projects exceeding 5 MW, the final average price was €0.05338/kWh. The tender’s overall final average price, including smaller PV project categories, was 4.7% higher than in the previous procurement exercise.

The manufacturer accounted for around 40% of total solar module demand in Taiwan in 2020. It expects to see its domestic market share increase to 50% this year.

A research group in the United States is proposing to add social variables in GIS-MCDA algorithms for PV project planning as a solution to avoid opposition to large scale solar from local communities. Although some efforts have already been made in this direction, there is still much to be done to understand the degree to which measuring these variables proactively could help mitigate public opposition down the line, on individual projects.

French floating PV specialist Ciel&Terre said the plant is being split into smaller islands, with a square shape, to avoid stress concentration.

Solar and wind power installations hit all-time highs and became a larger part of the country’s energy mix in 2020, according to a new report from BloombergNEF.

Flat Glass has activated two new glass furnaces that will bring its total production capacity to 8,600 MT per day. JinkoSolar has secured 20 GW of orders for its 182mm-wafer-based modules.

Researchers in the Netherlands have sought to identify all those semiconductor materials that may make the application of carrier multiplication in photovoltaics much more than a mere suggestion. According to them, the bandgap of the materials should be between 0.6–1.0 electronvolt (eV), which would result in maximum theoretical efficiency of around 44%. 2D and bulk materials were indicated as the most promising with near-ideal carrier multiplication.