Magazine Archive 2016

Inverter cost pressures: Exposure to the cool cost-reduction winds blowing in from China has triggered consolidation of the solar inverter market even further. What strategies can leading suppliers employ in order to stay competitive?

Module price index: Across most of the globe, module prices have plummeted as the industry comes out of a strong manufacturing period.

Volatility and growth: The solar industry should expect growth to continue, accelerating in some markets and stalling in others. Profitable for a few and low margin for many – business as usual for the global solar industry is to expect the unexpected.

Glass-glass lamination: The undeniably promising module encapsulation technology is not without its challenges. As producers attempt to scale dual-glass module production, addressing questions of quality, throughput, and yield remain paramount.

Global PV markets: Gaëtan Masson, Director of the Becquerel Institute, looks at the current market pressures faced by the PV industry. Now that China’s first half boom looks to have come to an end, will any other market be able to fill the gap?

Weather monitoring: The impact of weather on solar power arrays can be substantial, once the effects of clouds, dust, pollution, wind, humidity, rain, snow, and hail are added together. As the solar industry matures, more attention is being paid to monitoring such weather factors, for use in both performance analytics and in maintenance assessments.

Operations strategy: Data is big business for solar these days, with operators recording everything from tracker movements to the weather. But acquiring data is only half of the story: How can you be sure to turn it into meaningful results? Tor Blackstad, CEO at GreenPowerMonitor sheds some light on what can be achieved with effective data management.

Indian manufacturing: Perhaps the most dynamic solar market this year, the Indian PV sector could experience growing pains if steps are not taken soon to stem the country’s overreliance on cheap components – predominately sourced from China. But as with any teenage phase, the road towards independence and self-reliance is not always straightforward, as pv magazine discovers.

Grid Parity Monitor: PV utility-scale systems continue their track to generation parity, but must compete with increasingly lower wholesale electricity prices. The third edition of the Grid Parity Monitor (GPM) series, shortly to be released by Creara, focuses exclusively on the utility-scale segment and PV competitiveness within wholesale electricity markets.