Interview: Financing Indian solar projects amid the Covid-19 crisis
Vaibhav Pratap Singh, senior analyst from South Asian thinktank the Council on Energy, Environment and Water, tells pv magazine about the impact of the coronavirus pandemic on the Indian solar sector, green finance and other investment prospects.
Covid-19 weekly round-up: Polish solar is immune to the effects of Covid-19 and the coronavirus will drive EV manufacturing from China to India, apparently
Plus, one Australian installer says residents who had installed solar and storage at home will be cushioned against thumping, coronavirus-related electricity bill rises this quarter and there are signs of recovery in overall energy consumption levels.
Poland preps remote solar investment
The government is said to be working on amending its renewable energy legislation to enable people without their own roofspace to benefit from the solar boom.
Austria doubles financial support for solar rebates
The government has ramped up its budget for the rebate scheme to €10 million.
Self-cleaning PV system with active cooling tech
An international research group has developed a self-cooling PV system featuring a 250 W 60-cell polycrystalline module and a thermal collector attached to the back side of the panel. The cleaning tech is based on a microcontroller programmable integrated circuit, which controls a rotating DC motor.
Tesla now claims ‘lowest price for home solar’ – but process is ‘full of pitfalls’
Tesla has decimated its solar business from installation peaks of years past and its market share lead has long been surrendered to Sunrun and others. In December, it claimed it would install 1,000 building-integrated solar roofs per week – a figure it has not come close to achieving in six months. Is this any way to run a solar business?
Kstar launches all-in-one residential battery inverter solution
Its new line of residential hybrid storage systems integrates Kstar inverter technology with the lithium-ion storage technology of Chinese battery specialist CATL.
Covid-19 weekly round-up: Ups and downs from the US residential market and one Swedish city tries to attract Europe’s best and brightest
Industry body SolarPower Europe is trying to stay bullish about the lingering effects as the continent starts to come out of lockdown and one analyst has predicted a healthy large scale solar market will carry the US through the crisis.
Global solar capacity may reach 1,448 GW in 2024
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.
Romania allocates $59 million for solar rebates
The government will grant rebates to residential PV projects and may cover up to 90% of the costs of purchasing and deploying a rooftop array.
