Solar Power

German consultancy Enervis said the European market last year saw a 50% drop in new PPA-linked photovoltaic projects, compared to 2019. This year, however, higher capture prices for the PV energy source should enable a larger number of deals to be closed.

Jinko Solar secured another 338 million square meters of PV glass from Flat Glass. Tongwei and Trina Solar have left the monocrystalline wafer production joint venture they set up with Longi.

A new report from the U.S.-based analyst predicts that new PV additions for 2021 may range from 163 to 221 GW next year and from 179 to 240 GW in 2023. According to BloombergNEF, the current supply bottlenecks for glass and polysilicon will unlikely halt the global PV market.

Increasing prices may prompt module manufacturers to find alternatives, or at least reduce silver use in solar cell metallization, according to a recent study. Researcher Samuele Lo Piano, however, told pv magazine silver availability does not represent an issue for large scale PV. Copper-nickel alloys may offer an alternative, he added, but there could be a long wait for them to be viable.

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.