Magazine Archive 2015

Solar flight: Solar panels have been a ubiquitous sight on satellites since the dawn of space travel, but their use thus far has only ever been secondary to more traditional power sources. Solar Impulse, however, hopes to break these boundaries when it embarks on the world’s first round-the-world, solar-powered-only flight in March. pv magazine gets up close and personal with the craft – and crew – attempting this historic feat.

WFES 2015: the MENA region has long attracted the attention of the global solar industry as a collection of national markets with enormous potential. The question of whether the market will live up to its hype or remain an enormous missed opportunity is still unclear, but it does appear that now is the time for this debate to be met head on.

Operations & maintenance: The U.S. PV industry has shown it knows how to build distributed solar and massive power plants alike – but the need to operate and maintain them is creating new challenges and opportunities.

European R&D: Criticized for toiling away in labs while the PV industry lies gravely injured, Europe’s R&D sector hopes a series of pan-continental projects can help wrest control of solar’s global future. pv magazine visited the INES research center in France to see how the community is regrouping and collaborating as it prepares to survive Europe’s solar winter.

Japan: coming through the module glut unscathed is no mean feat for a thin film manufacturer, but Solar Frontier has long turned expectation on its head. 2014 saw the firm travel along its own path in how it develops projects, moves its CIGS technology forward, releases differentiated products, and looks to the international market.

Module prices: A weak Q4 has once again led to a drop in module prices in Europe. Trina Solar and Yingli currently dominate the market.

Feed-in tariffs: A number of changes have taken place to feed-in-tariff schemes on both sides of the Atlantic.

Grid parity monitor: Solar PV self-consumption is an attractive alternative for residential consumers in major markets. Most European countries have reached grid parity in the solar energy self-consumption market, explains María Jesús Báez, Associate at eclareon, which merged its business with Creara last year to form Creara Energy Experts.

Industry investment: Total corporate funding in the solar sector increased 175% to $26.5 billion in 2014, reports Raj Prabhu, CEO and cofounder of Mercom Capital Group. Last year saw strong public market financing, debt financing, and initial public offering activity. Venture capital funding doubled after a two year slump. Large-scale PV project acquisition activity continued to soar.