Italy

According to a new study, PV may reach an installed power of 144.5 GW in Italy by the end of the first half of the century, followed by onshore and offshore wind with 59.6 GW and 17.6 GW, respectively. The research is based on a new computational model that identifies the best spatial distribution of renewable energy sources in an individual country or electricity system while avoiding problematic concentrations of technologies

Negative second-quarter updates from China and uber-low new-solar figures from India, however, show the world is far from out of the woods yet.

Researchers have matched the tinting of semi-transparent PV modules with the bandwidth of light that plants absorb for photosynthesis. A promising trial with basil and spinach has opened up economic opportunities for farmers.

France’s EnerGaïa Forum will be held Dec. 9-10 in Montpellier, while Italy’s Key Energy event will be held in Rimini from Nov. 3-6. Australia’s top PV industry event will not take place in 2020.

pv magazine editor Pilar Sánchez Molina recalls news from the PV sector of ten years ago as part of a new series. The insights offered will not only bring back memories for the pioneers of that exciting, challenging period but may also offer an idea of where we could be in 2030.

The inverter and energy storage company was able to maintain its streak of profitable quarters in what was expected to be a hard period for solar and the Israeli business said it sees “signs of recovery in the U.S.”

A French-Italian research group has shown that BIPV facades on buildings can cause a ‘darkening’ effect by reducing light reflectance on nearby installations, dragging down energy production by 11%. The ‘urban heat island effect’ can also weigh on PV system performance, the researchers said.

The operations and maintenance and the engineering, procurement and construction arms of PV company Enerray have been sold off by troubled industrial conglomerate Gruppo Industriale Maccaferri for cash, transferring 240 MWp of Italian generation capacity to the management of rival LT Renewables.

A 103 MW solar park built by Danish developer European Energy has been connected to the grid after a year of construction work. The project had been started in 2011 and at one stage appeared doomed, when a national feed-in tariff program ended.

Renewables company Ellomay Capital has been forced to reduce the scale of its planned 340 MW Manara Cliff project, in the north of the country, because two rival schemes have already gobbled up a large proportion of the capacity quota currently offered by the government.