Indian rooftop PV capacity nears 6 GW
Bridge to India figures show dominance of Chinese inverters, which supplied almost 80% of installs from July last year to the end of June.
Keeping PV panels honest
Michelle McCann and Lawrence McIntosh, the partners behind the PV Lab panel-testing facility in Canberra, see Australia’s solar installations as a vast, aggregated virtual power plant.
Covid-19 weekly round-up: Australian states target green recovery as France devotes €30bn to energy transition
Clean energy power plants will figure prominently as Queensland and Victoria bid to reset their economies for a post-coronavirus world. France suffered a hit to its new solar deployment figures in the first half of a Covid-hit year but its neighbor appears to have no such concerns.
UK Citizens’ Assembly speaks highly of solar – but is government listening?
Some 81% of the everyday folk asked how the U.K. should realize its net zero 2050 ambition said solar should be part of the mix and views were also aired on electric and hydrogen transport, home heating and how to incentivize companies to embrace a circular manufacturing model.
Sweden exempts from energy tax on self-consumption all PV systems of up to 500 kW
On the top of the new fiscal measure, the Swedish government has also announced that the rebate scheme for rooftop PV, which was originally scheduled to be closed this year, will be continued in 2021. It will only apply to municipalities and enterprises and with a limited budget of 260 million SEK ($29.6 million), however.
Residential storage solution with BYD battery, Fronius inverter
BYD and Fronius have started offering the BYD Battery-Box Premium storage system and Fronius Symo GEN24 Plus inverter as a bundle. They said the combined solution can be used in residential PV arrays and light commercial systems.
First Solar brings modules to distributed generation market
The U.S. utility-scale PV pioneer is going small. After decades of avoiding distributed generation, it is now offering its Series 6 modules for ‘projects and customers of all shapes and sizes.’
China could be preparing to settle unpaid subsidies mountain
In-country analyst the AECEA has speculated the authorities could be ready to wipe the slate clean for the start of the nation’s 14th five-year plan on January 1. The analyst has raised its solar expectations for the year but noted the sky-high price of polysilicon remains a concern for developers.
NREL scientists encourage ‘optimal’ PV curtailment
Solar curtailment might become a valuable aspect of future PV deployment, particularly if grid operators start focusing on ‘curtailment management’ instead of ‘curtailment prevention.’ Management would include measures such as flexible generation, storage, load flexibility, and regional coordination.
Machine-learning for PV module cleaning
French researchers have developed a machine-learning model to clean low-power PV projects and standalone solar arrays in rural areas isolated from the grid.
