pv magazine test
November 2018 Results, from the test installation site in Xi’an, China.
pv magazine test – latest results for December 2018
We are happy to present the next batch of energy yield results from the outdoor test field at Xi’an, China. The December results are presented below.
pv magazine test – January 2019 results
We are happy to present to the next batch of pv magazine test energy yield results. Results from the pv magazine test installation in Xi’an, China for the month of January 2019 are presented below, with additional insight provided by George Touloupas, Director of Technology and Quality at CEA.
Drivers of energy convergence
The expansion of The smarter E Europe exhibition and conference continues apace in 2019, with the expansion of power-to-gas, and solar and battery storage’s increasing competitiveness capturing new territory. It is managing to meet both system requirements, and customer demand.
Utility cards reshuffled
The game of energy poker, once predictable to the card counters of old, sees a number of new jokers added to the pack. Former trump cards of incumbent utilities, like coal and nuclear, are becoming less valuable. It would be foolish, however, to mistake legacy as weakness, as with every reshuffling, long-standing players are left with surprises up their sleeves – and much at stake.
Past and future glories
Since 2009, when production capacity expansions began to outstrip demand for the first time, prices all along the solar supply chain fell, and have continued to do so almost continuously ever since. Simon Price, CEO of Exawatt, argues that solar is no longer in the ‘cost reduction era,’ and is now entering its ‘performance driven era,’ in which the goal for manufacturers is high performance at an acceptable cost, rather than acceptable performance at the lowest cost.
The dawn of megastorage
Plummeting costs, industry maturity, and the ever-increasing penetration of global renewables are expanding the use cases for battery storage technology. Over the past year and a half, storage projects are increasing significantly in both scope and capacity.
VPPs as congestion buster
Two related challenges have become barriers to increasing penetration levels for rooftop solar: the hosting capacity of the grid, and the need to maintain stability during periods of peak demand. The Future PV Roundtable, held alongside The smarter E event in Munich, looked at how distributed energy resources such as PV and battery storage, along with demand-side flexibility, can help to meet these challenges – all thanks to VPPs.
Addressing HJT capex, opex in equipment supply
Heterojunction can be an attractive technology pathway for a number of PV producers, says Christian Knechtel CEO and CFO of Von Ardenne. However, the key to deployment could lie in manufacturing key production tools in a cheaper manner while continuously ramping up throughput.
Australia’s move toward merchant solar
While significant module price declines will likely make selling power on the spot market a new reality, making merchant solar stack up is not an easy job. In Australia, the number of merchant PV projects is rising, but wild swings in wholesale power prices, which are increasingly hitting zero or below, have raised eyebrows recently. What are the reasons behind this trend and where is the market heading?
