World

A new white paper published by analysts at IHS Markit compares the electricity network with other key systems such as transport and data infrastructure. The report concludes that increasing the amount of electricity storage available could create a more flexible, efficient and reliable grid, and save billions of dollars each year.

Coal production in freefall, says new report by Greenpeace, Sierra Club and CoalSwarm, which recorded a 62% reduction in new coal power construction starts and a 48% drop in pre-construction activity last year.

The Chinese solar company shipped 5,232 MW in 2016 but saw its revenue fall from $3.47bn in 2015 to $2.85bn last year as the global price squeeze on solar modules hit the firm’s bottom line.

Berlin Energy Transition Dialogue 2017 will see the presentation of a joint report by International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA) and International Energy Agency (IEA), their first ever collaboration with an eye on decarbonization of global energy system.

Gigawatts a-go-go this week as Turkey, Algeria and Vietnam all toy with those magical GWs, while in more mature markets German storage figures provided reasons for optimism and Blattner Energy took the top spot for U.S. EPCs.

Two different reports highlight how PV demand is currently improving silver’s industrial offtake. The Silver Institute says that prices have increased 9% since the beginning of this year, while ETF Securities says that mining capital expenditure and investments are declining, and that this could further weigh on silver supply.

Distributed storage costs: With the average payback cost of a home battery storage system sticking stubbornly at around ten years, skeptics remain unconvinced that mass-market adoption of distributed storage is on the cards any time soon. So what measures is the industry taking to expedite cost reductions, improve storage technology, and shift the conversation from a ‘nice to have’ to a ‘must have’?

Growth in distributed renewable power generation is sparking raft of regulatory requirements that benefit module level power electronics, says a Frost & Sullivan report.

Amid the innovation on display in Portugal, the optimism in Japan and the, well, eagerness in Norway were stories of takeovers, Tesla and storage that shaped yet another fascinating week in the global solar PV industry.

The growing demand for affordable electric vehicle batteries is driving cost reductions in lithium-ion battery technology, which is beneficial for affordable stationary storage, finds new Lux Research report.