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This year, The Smarter E made its debut this June 20 to 22 in Munich, Germany, bringing together existing exhibitions, Intersolar Europe and ees Europe, with two new events, Power2Drive Europe and EM-Power. This change reflects both the strong shift towards storage, and the rapidly changing face of the overall energy industry. pv magazine hit the floors, attended the conferences and held two roundtables to discover the latest trends. Read on to discover our eight key takeaways (and one new buzzword).

Inverter manufacturers tapped into the major theme of digitization in their product presentations at this year’s Smarter E event in Munich – of which Intersolar Europe is a part of. The solutions deploy smart software solutions for maximizing self-consumption, O&M provision and enable hybrid architectures across all three market segments.

The latest figures from the Taiwanese analysts show that prices for monocrystalline solar PV products have fallen sharply in a week-on-week comparison. The price drop for wafer was even stronger.

In a significant development, two major international solar coalitions – the Global Solar Council (GSC) and the International Solar Alliance (ISA) – signed an MoU for the cooperation and collaboration of solar growth in all ISA-member countries. Pranav Mehta from the GSC talks to pv magazine about the move.

As forecast in its 2017 financial report, JinkoSolar shipped around 2 GW of modules in the first quarter of this year. Meanwhile, it did not adjust its forecast for 2018 shipments, in the range of 11.5 GW to 12 GW, despite the Chinese government’s cuts to installations.

Through the consultation, the U.S. aims to settle the dispute over the 30% import tariffs, introduced under Section 201.

According to a new report from the PV Market Alliance (PVMA), the global solar PV market will only be marginally affected by the recent China policy decisions, and will grow to become an up to 200 GW market by 2022. Diversification will continue, with new segments accounting for up to 25% of the entire market by this time.

One manufacturer after another has announced bifacial modules, and buyers would do well to consider the benefits. Independent calculations show that increases of up to 15% or more are realistic in countries such as Germany.

Perovskites, a tempting low-cost alternative to crystalline silicon based solar cells, could be moving closer to commercial production thanks to a new way of applying the critical electron transport layer (ETL) pioneered by an international team of researchers.

With Intersolar Europe underway in Munich, pv magazine caught up with Alex Pan, Europe General Manager at SolaxPower to discuss the storage inverter supplier’s latest innovations and market position.