Next junction: innovation
Junction boxes: The seemingly low-tech functionality of the humble junction box belies a piece of kit performing a vital role in maintaining solar’s exemplary safety records. But how do junction box suppliers stay ahead of the game in an industry where new technologies, higher voltages and tighter margins are always around the corner?
Managing project risk in China
Financial risk: Poor project performance for solar plants in China is the result of a number of factors, but the bottom line is – it increases investment risk. Dirk Kayser, who serves as financial supervisor for Photovoltaik-Institut Berlin’s China operations, explores how government and the private sector are tackling these challenges.
From 1,000 to 1,500
Connectors: Battery connection makers are broadly adopting plug-and-play formats for energy storage solutions, borrowing much from the telecommunications industry, long dependent on power backups. At the same time, new demand is rising for communications ports on batteries, both for internal diagnostics and for system controllers, ushering the Internet of Things into energy storage.
Increasing complexity calls for vision
How can an expected 80 GW be a disappointment? The answer lies in solar’s stellar rise in years past. Leading forecasts for the global solar market are all pointing to 2017 representing 12 months of marginal growth. A good result when considered against some of the doomsday predictions made earlier in the year or in the latter […]
The listlessness of lists
Author: Paula Mints The annual top 10 list of manufacturers is an annual rite of spring in the solar PV industry, and so it is worth asking what this list tells us and whether or not it is still useful. On the one hand, the annual top 10 list observed over time offers a view […]
SNEC 2017 show review
A market proving robust in the face of a range of uncertainties, a push to high efficiency, and intense competition right across technology segments, the 2017 SNEC show did not disappoint. Sprawling across the entire week from April 17 – 21, what is now the world’s largest PV conference and trade show again reflected the […]
The return of PURPA
U.S. energy policy: A wonky electric sector law from the 1970s has emerged as the main driver for utility-scale solar in the United States this year. But while PURPA is responsible for booms in many new markets, the future of the policy is far from certain.
Building a solar civilization
Interview: Jeremy Leggett, British social entrepreneur, writer, campaigner and founder of Solarcentury and SolarAid, tells pv magazine how a solar civilazation can be an effective buck-stop against the populist forces that seek to undermine and discredit the transformative power of renewable technologies It is solar, in all its forms, that is bringing the fight against malign forces, he says.
The future of European energy
The winter package proposed by the European Commission is exactly what EU supporters have always asked of Brussels: a clear and comprehensive vision that conceives of the European Union as a whole, and not a patchwork of quarrelsome states with diverging interests. How much solar and wind will be installed in the next decade, however, […]
Growing renewables globally
pv magazine: On the BayWa AG level, one of the highlights in the 2016 financial results was the performance of the renewable energy business. To what do you attribute that success? Matthias Taft: The renewable energy business has become very important for us in recent years. I am happy to say that the energy division overall […]
