Magazine Archive 04-2013

Ardour Solar Index: Trade wars wage on stabilization in pricing. Index constituents post widely varied performances.

India: With the southern state of Karnataka aiming for 1.2 GW of rooftop PV installations and the Kerala state government targeting 10,000 solar rooftops, Madhavan Nampoothiri of RESolve Energy Consultants looks at the country’s rooftop revolution.

Inverters: Inverters can now communicate and are better adapted to their various uses than ever before. Thomas Mühlberger, head of PV System Technology at Fronius International GmbH, talks about the trends.

Measuring irradiance: Pyranometers and reference cells – what makes the most sense for PV power plants? Part 2 of a two-part series by five collaborators representing diverse organizations but sharing a unified vision of a way to reduce uncertainty in PV power plant performance measurements.

Chinese factory gate prices: For the first time in 18 months, the prices of Chinese PV modules increased in February.

Market overview: Manufacturers have to get creative in order for their inverters to keep pace with the fast-moving photovoltaics market. Operators of small photovoltaic installations, for instance, put emphasis on timely monitoring solutions via the Internet or a smartphone, and installers like systems that are easy to configure, with flexible interconnection options. On large solar farms, high efficiencies and low maintenance are in high demand.

Ingot and wafer production: Are innovations that can reduce wafer production costs worth the effort?

PV market in Japan: At the moment Japan is probably the most attractive PV market in the world. This could easily be seen at the PV Expo trade show in Tokyo at the beginning of March. Promising business opportunities are on offer particularly for companies with high quality products. Up to 5 GW of additional PV capacity is expected to be added this year.

Feed-in tariffs: Pakistan proposes a new FIT with an IRR of 17%. Italy’s Conto Energia V enters semester two. And Japan lowers their FIT by about 10%, but it will not be enough to prevent them from becoming the second biggest PV market globally in 2013.