BYD

Spanish clean energy company Grenergy has donated 55,000 pieces of Chinese-made personal protective equipment to the authorities in Madrid and electronics and e-mobility company BYD this month opened the ‘world’s largest mass-produced face masks plant,’ in Shenzhen.

Reports of module under-performance at the Mulilo Sonnedix Prieska solar project have prompted a response from South African company Artsolar, one of the module suppliers for the plant. The project is said to be experiencing serious problems due to premature module degradation. Divian Govendar, CEO of Johannesburg-based Artsolar, said the company has not been required to replace any modules at the site.

The Chinese manufacturer has also announced plans for a tenfold production capacity increase, as it wants to cater to all project sizes with two versions of its high-voltage storage system.

The Chinese e-mobility company has been hammered since Beijing’s abrupt reduction of electric vehicle subsidies in the summer. Korean outfit LG Chem’s shipment volumes have gone in the opposite direction.

The Japanese government has issued a policy to reduce 80% of vehicle-related emissions, but high-power charging facilities for e-buses should also be aligned with distributed PV generation. Kyocera is now optimizing its virtual power plant technologies for this use case.

At the Smarter E Europe trade show in Munich, pv magazine caught up with Lior Handelsman, VP for marketing and product strategy and founder of Solaredge. The Israeli company made headlines as it went on an acquisition spree in the last year to leverage its position in the storage and EV charging business.

Owners of residential PV systems increasingly want more features. Virtual power plants, smart EV charging and self-consumption measured by ever higher percentages of self-sufficiency have been buzzwords in the industry. The result has been a new breed of smart bidirectional inverters, sometimes dubbed hybrid inverters. And with utilities having found business models that also work out in their favor, could a new dawn of residential installations rise over the world of suburbia?

In May, oil giant Shell invested in German manufacturer Sonnen. Now the 112-year-old company wants to fully acquire the business, subject to Germany’s monopoly authorities. Sonnen said it hopes the deal will accelerate its growth by expanding its market reach and capacity.

A number of significant manufacturing and investment plans in China, Germany and North America by major automobile makers VW, Tesla and BYD are backing up predictions that electric vehicle car sales are set to skyrocket in the coming decades.

Researchers from Berlin’s College for Technology and Economics have determined a ‘system performance index’ for 16 residential storage systems. The index ranks systems according to economic efficiency. The compilers of the index say many manufacturers lack transparency regarding system performance.