Magazine Archive 11 – 2023 | Tipping point

The rollercoaster of surging and plunging demand is a familiar feature of many PV marketplaces. Ethan Miller, the chief operating officer of Powur, a residential solar sales and project fulfillment platform, reports that the ‘solar coaster’ has arrived in the United States this year.

Solar industry expansion is racing ahead but shortages of skilled labor could derail progress. Long-term solutions are required to support further growth. Benoit Ribeaud, partner at Everoze, explores how a workforce bottleneck is affecting the solar industry and calls for more action to alleviate recruitment pressure.

There’s no simple fix for reducing Scope 3 emissions but there is an increasing number of tools and strategies available, finds Carrie Hampel, as she investigates how solar developers are tackling emissions reduction across their supply chains.

Competition is heating up in the PV testing equipment market as manufacturers fight for a slice of the pie. For brands such as US-based company Fluke, global growth in solar installation numbers creates new sales opportunities – but only if they offer the right tools for the job. Field application engineer Markus Bakker spoke with pv magazine to explain the approach Fluke takes to PV testing.

Across Africa, rooftop solar is stepping in to fill the void as fears of non-payment and inflation-reduced donor funding dampen enthusiasm for big solar. Commercial and industrial (C&I) arrays are leading the charge, driving consolidation in markets overstocked with startup and mid-size installers, as Max Hall discovers.

For the final time this year, what follows is a selection of the most eye-catching innovations from the 2023 crop of pv magazine Award entries. We are now in the process of narrowing down the list of more than 200 entries received, to select winners in each category which we will announce in the December 2023 edition.

First Solar and its cadmium telluride (CdTe) technology dominate thin-film solar in the mainstream market. Valerie Thompson looks at the US-based business and the future of thin-film PV technology.

The implementation of diamond wire wafer cutting dramatically reduced kerf – the crystalline material that is wasted when a solar ingot is sliced into wafers. Now epitaxy allows kerf losses to be kicked to the curb and Germany’s NexWafe is taking its epitaxial wafer production to commercial scale. Chief executive officer (CEO)Davor Sutija spoke with pv magazine shortly after the ground-breaking ceremony at its new facility in October.

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 technologies. As a key patent expires, a wave of applications may very well be on the horizon.

In July 2016, Solar Impulse completed the first solar-powered flight around the world in a single-seater, fixed-wing aircraft. It was equipped with 17,000 Sunpower-Maxeon PV cells and a novel electric propulsion system. The 42,000 kilometer adventure has created a desire to promote cleaner technologies, reports Valerie Thompson.