Magazine Archive 2023

As 2022 drew to a close, trade body SolarPower Europe (SPE) released its “EU Market Outlook for Solar Power 2022-2026” report. Forecasting year-on-year expansion of 47%, SPE found that 41.4 GW of PV were installed last year. The association expects the 50 GW annual installation milestone to be surpassed this year, swelling to 85 GW […]

The year 2022 was a watershed 12 months for energy storage and the massive increase in demand has left everyone clamoring for more. Scaling up supply proved to be a challenge and batteries became almost impossible to get hold of. Despite the unprecedented reverse in the historic pattern of battery-pack price declines, analysts at BloombergNEF […]

Already, 2023 is bringing unprecedented development to the global PV market as forecasts for annual installations surge above the 300 GW mark. To meet this demand, manufacturing is ramping up across the solar supply chain. Encouragingly, the production capacity being added – plus existing lines being upgraded – are coming in the form of high-efficiency […]

When faced with a crisis, speed is of the essence. At the SolarPower Summit in Brussels in March, International Energy Agency (IEA) Executive Director Fatih Birol delivered a “bravo” to EU member states, policymakers, and companies for what they had managed to achieve in the face of the energy crisis caused by Russia’s invasion of […]

There is nothing quite like the scale that China can, and has achieved. With vast human and financial resources available, the country has built many things with an urgency the world has never seen before – from tech giants, to high-speed train networks, and vast urban centers, through to innovative manufacturing companies. And it has […]

With the dislocation and disruption of the Covid-19 pandemic, ongoing climatic upheavals as the result of global warming, and the crisis posed by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the opening part of this decade has been tumultuous. And yet, the solar and energy storage industries have thrived. What’s more, at the midpoint of 2023, the solar […]

With one terawatt of solar having been installed globally, a milestone that was reached last year, it should come as no surprise that many new people are coming into contact with our technology each and every day. And with the second terawatt destined to take only a handful of years to be achieved, it is […]

Large parts of the history of the modern solar industry have been written by China’s manufacturers. Key developments such as the achievement of vast scale in production; the lock-step development of material, equipment suppliers, and manufacturers; and the adoption of technology such as bifacial cells and modules, took place in China and have changed the […]

The pendulum has swung back. PV module prices are falling rapidly once again. After a period of pandemic-disrupted supply chain and supply constraint – and resultant higher prices – intense competition on cost-per-Watt has re-emerged. The development may have caught some by surprise and will likely lead to a painful period for many. But it […]

  It was only in June, at the Intersolar Europe trade show, that the extent of the oversupply situation facing the global solar market in 2023 became clear. Following a wave of multi-gigawatt capacity expansions to existing manufacturers in China, along with new entrants and a host of manufacturers adding lines and new facilities in […]