Magazine Archive 01-2016

Module testing, durability and performance: With extreme light, heat and dust, desert environments can present big challenges for PV power plants. While these challenges can be met and overcome, PV projects in arid regions require additional consideration and a careful approach to maintenance.

Tracker supply chains: Reducing the costs within a far-flung global supply chain is one of the growing pains of the PV tracker industry, and luckily an exercise other industries have helped to streamline.

Utility-scale monitoring: With every passing day more and more solar panels are installed at large-scale sites across the world. Each panel represents a new possibility in a cleaner energy future, but despite their durability, things can, and do, go wrong. But solar’s maturation has nurtured a growing monitoring sector that not only identifies and understands faults, but can offer predictive modeling to reduce risk before ground is broken.

Inverters in hot climates: Heat, dust and humidity can be fatal for solar inverters. But as the PV industry inches deeper into the world’s sunbelt regions – bringing ever greater thermal stresses to bear on components – pv magazine learns that poor production will kill an inverter far quicker than any weather type can.

Rooftop solar: Dubai has launched an extremely ambitious renewable energy program including a goal to install solar PV on all suitable roofs by 2030. However, questions remain as to how the Emirate can reach its lofty goals.

Off-grid Africa: While the supporters of fossil fuels like to portray solar electricity as being a luxury affordable only in rich nations, its transformative power in the Global South is emerging at pace. Interestingly, business models along with technology are proving crucial in driving this change and Headwall Power’s Brad Meikle takes an inside look at one of the leaders.

Global manufacturing: There is a likelihood that a substantial supply-demand imbalance may reappear in 2017 following capacity expansions to take place this year. EnergyTrend’s Corrine Lin investigates the pricing trends, manufacturing announcements and draws some conclusions as to what we can expect from 2016.

COP21: The ‘success’ of the COP21 Climate Summit in Paris last December was predicated on the notion that this really is our last chance to save the planet, so something had to be done. However, the growing viability of solar power, and its acceptance globally, is a tangible cause for optimism.