The first installations featuring the Tesla Powerwall 3 are currently being completed in the United States, with the company promoting a fully integrated solar-plus-storage and electric vehicle (EV) residential system, with big backup power capacity. While the first Powerwall created a new market segment, the latest iteration enters a marketplace in oversupply.

Bilateral power offtake agreements between corporate and industrial companies and solar projects are creating significant and growing demand for utility-scale PV in Australia. The development is one of a number of bright spots in a challenging market segment.

The production of PV ingots and wafers remains the most highly concentrated of all the production stages in the silicon solar supply chain. Yet efforts to re-establish production in Europe and the United States are not for the faint-hearted.

The accelerating deployment of large-scale energy storage is one factor behind the tailwinds forming for large-scale solar in Australia. Rystad Energy Senior Analyst David Dixon said that with gigawatts of big batteries under construction, the flexible load will create demand for solar during peak PV production periods.

PV manufacturing analysis is revealing that module prices can not “sustainably” fall significantly in 2024 without producers selling below cost. UK-based analysts Exawatt delivered the development last week, in a trend observed by Australian market participants.

South Korean solar module maker Qcells told its local team this week that its Australian subsidiary will be closed. The decision underscores the highly competitive nature of the Australian solar marketplace and the company’s strategic decision to focus on its home market, the United States, and Europe.

As rooftop solar racks up records in Australia, price cannibalization has resulted in a “struggling” large-scale market segment. Bruce Mountain, head of the University of Victoria’s Energy Policy Centre, says that increasingly depressed wholesale electricity prices during the day are squeezing out big PV.

The application of busbarless cell interconnection approaches could unlock the potential of heterojunction (HJT) technology, primarily by reducing the historically high silver usage of negatively-doped, “n-type” cell technology. As HJT manufacturing increases, a wave of applications may very well be on the horizon.

At this year’s Intersolar Europe conference in Munich, pv magazine caught up with Gregory Lukens, the new Director Utility Europe for Solis, a brand of Ginlong Technologies. He discussed his background in solar, and how the company is looking to build its footprint in the European utility scale segment.

At Intersolar in Munich, pv magazine spoke with Jenny Chase, solar analyst at BloombergNEF, about falling solar module prices, oversupply, bottlenecks in the European markets, and labor issues. According to Chase, lower panel prices won’t instantly create demand, and manufacturers should prepare to deal with very low margins. She also said we can expect to see more consolidation in the industry, and bankruptcies for uncompetitive producers may be unavoidable.