utility-scale solar

As the ongoing changes in Italian politics inevitably create some uncertainties, PV operators continue to organize themselves, pulling together to put forward their agenda. pv magazine spoke with Andrea Cristini, spokesperson of new industry body Alleanza per il fotovoltaico in Italia, a group of 25 operators which in December joined forces to promote utility scale solar parks.

A 50 MW PV project, located in northern central Bangladesh’s Mymensingh district, has begun supplying electricity to the national grid. Full commercial operations for the plant are expected to begin in January.

The in-country analyst has revised up its expectation for this year and says a healthy unsubsidized project pipeline will keep the numbers ticking over in 2021. The spending plans necessary to ramp up renewables targets in the next five-year plan, though, could put the nation on a collision course with the EU.

With the International Energy Agency publishing its latest five-year clean energy forecast today, pv magazine takes a look at the solar content of the 162-page document.

Plus, U.K. analyst Cornwall Insight reports the price of green energy certificates in the nation could stay in the doldrums for some time and industry executives consider the upsides of the new virtual PV business.

SolarPower Europe has predicted the volume of new PV capacity added this year will be 4% less than last year’s figure because of the Covid-19 crisis. At the end of 2019, the world had topped 630 GW of solar. For 2020, around 112 GW of new PV capacity is expected, and in 2021, newly installed capacity could be 149.9 GW if governments support renewables in their coronavirus economic recovery plans.

The rooftop segment maintained strong growth but utility scale PV saw a slowdown on previous months. In the first four months of 2020, newly deployed PV systems added up to 1,479.5 MW of generation capacity, compared with around 1.6 GW in the same period of last year. The nation’s cumulative PV capacity hit 50.46 GW at the end of April.

The International Energy Agency has acknowledged dramatic falls in energy investment caused by the Covid-19 crisis but said renewables, including PV, offered an attractive proposition to investors as the dust settled, given their enticing economics and short turnaround times.

The technology makes up almost 70% of planned clean energy generation capacity in a nation which added just 4 MW of solar last year.

The US National Renewable Energy Laboratory examined five-year data to observe the most common system failure points and how to prevent them. Researchers considered residential, commercial and utility scale plants and found interesting results. While failures cannot be avoided completely, a key takeaway was that close monitoring and timely repair can effectively mitigate the financial effects of failures.