South Korea

South Korea’s cumulative installed PV capacity hit 22 GW at the end of 2021, according to provisional figures from the Korea Energy Agency.

Selected projects will be awarded a fixed rate under a 20-year contract under the country’s renewable energy certificate (REC) scheme and will sell electricity to local power distributors.

In the third quarter of this year, around 677 MW of new PV systems were connected to the Korean grid, which is comparatively lower than in the same quarter a year earlier. According to local analysts, the market contraction is due to delayed permitting because of expanding siting restrictions.

High polysilicon prices helped South Korean supplier OCI to achieve strong results in the third quarter. Tight supply and demand conditions will likely continue until the first half of 2022, the company said.

The continuous rise in solar panel prices may affect PV projects of up to 1 MW tendered by the Korea Energy Agency and the domestic solar module industry may not be able to provide the necessary production capacity to respond to the recent supply bottleneck.

UK research firm Wood Mackenzie reports that Northeast Asia and Europe are expected to become the main hydrogen importers, accounting for 55% of seaborne hydrogen trade, whereas Australia, the Middle East and, possibly, Russia and the U.S. have the greatest export potential. Plug Power and Lhyfe closed a deal to build green hydrogen generation plants throughout Europe.

Planned to be located in Gwangju, in southwestern Korea, the new factory is expected to reach a capacity of 385 MW and to produce 550 W panels.

Selected projects will be awarded a fixed rate under a 20-year contract under the country’s renewable energy certificate (REC) scheme and will sell electricity to local power distributors.

Researchers in South Korea have fabricated a cadmium-free heterojunction kesterite solar cell based on a zinc sulfide oxide Zn(O,S) buffer layer. They used a one-minute ammonium sulfide (NH4)2S treatment process for surface cleaning and passivation of the cell’s CZTSSe absorber.

According to new figures by the Korean Energy Agency, South Korea seems on track to have another successful year in terms of newly deployed PV. According to local experts, however, this will not be enough to achieve the Korean government’s goal of 20% renewable generation by 2030.