Magazine Archive 2016

Wafers shortage: Multicrystalline silicon wafers are currently in short supply across the solar landscape after years of overcapacity. Such market dynamics are prompting huge capacity expansion plans among leading wafer suppliers – driving new rounds of investment production techniques that could boost efficiencies.

NYSE Bloomberg Solar Energy Index: COP21 and extension of US Investment Tax Credit drive index; optimism offset by China FIT cuts and possible EU import tariffs.

WFES 2016: A mere month after the world rejoiced at the progress made in Paris, the World Future Energy Summit in Abu Dhabi was the ideal opportunity to take stock of the global clean energy landscape and ask: Where do we go from here? Although many other questions remain, MENA’s role in this journey is becoming far clearer.

India’s solar ambition: In leading calls for a solar alliance at the COP21 summit in Paris, India demonstrated its growing appetite for the industry. But can ambition be matched with solid growth and development, and what are the challenges that still need to be overcome? IBC Solar: German engineering expertise and knowledge of local business culture combined to produce the best results and effective knowledge transfer.

Floating PV: Floating PV plants have moved beyond space-saving solutions for wineries and densely populated areas like Japan, to a paired power technology addition for hydro dam reservoirs. Brazil, India and other countries are pursuing reservoir installations, and the list grows longer.

Hybrid inverters: In solar, the term ‘hybrid’ can be loosely applied to any part of the system that combines two types of functionality into one. In the inverter space, a growing trend for hybrid inverters is emerging – but what, exactly, are they, and how does the claim that they augment typical PV architecture stack up? pv magazine discovers that, in fact, not all hybrid inverters are created equal.

China policy: In seeking to address various shortcomings in China’s strong – but flawed – solar PV industry, the government has borrowed a scheme from its Japanese neighbors that has historically proven successful in raising the bar in terms of technical and performance standards. Can this program be translated seamlessly to the solar sector of China?

Cabling concerns: As PV cable and connector redesigns take place, more universal plug-and-play solutions are adopted, more harness pre-assembly takes place and more standardized links to junction boxes, inverters and panels are forged.

Global growth: Can the PV industry reach multi-terawatt annual deployment? Various roadblocks exist, not least the well-funded attack dogs of the conventional energy industries, but the opportunities and lessons learned are instructive of the path to take.