Residential PV

India is seeing record demand for rooftop solar both from residential and industrial consumers. While the recently announced Pradhan Mantri Suryodaya Yojana (PMSY) Scheme is driving adoption among residential consumers, industries seek to add clean energy to meet climate goals amid falling panel prices.

India’s annual solar installations in 2024 will surpass 20 GW, with 15.9 GW of capacity likely to be added in the utility-scale segment and 4.2 GW on rooftops, says a new report by JMK Research.

The International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA) says developers installed 345.5 GW of solar throughout the world in 2023. China mainly drove the surge, accounting for nearly three-quarters of all new renewable energy, but IRENA says more equitable growth will be needed to hit 2030 deployment targets.

Researchers in Australia have compared the technical and financial performances of a hydrogen battery storage system and a lithium-ion battery when coupled with rooftop PV. They evaluated two commercially available systems – LAVO and Tesla Powerwall 2 – and found that the lithium-ion battery provides better financial profits, whereas the hydrogen battery offers more battery lifespan for long duration of energy storage.

The Israeli government said that earlier this month, for several minutes, renewable energy accounted for most of the nation’s energy production. In particular, solar covered 45% of total generation.

An international research team explained that, although inverter clipping is initially effective in mitigating soiling losses, these losses could become more visible with time, as solar module degradation makes clipping less frequent. They also warned that inverter undersizing alone may not be enough to mitigate soiling losses and suggested cleaning as an additional way to reduce them.

Noida-based RCRS Innovations Ltd, the parent company of lithium-ion battery manufacturer EXEGI, plans giga-scale expansion. It will also launch container-sized energy storage solutions with megawatt-hour level capacities and add TOPCon products to its range of solar panels.

The first installations featuring the Tesla Powerwall 3 are currently being completed in the United States, with the company promoting a fully integrated solar-plus-storage and electric vehicle (EV) residential system, with big backup power capacity. While the first Powerwall created a new market segment, the latest iteration enters a marketplace in oversupply.

The state government stated that more than 100,000 people have been registered on the portal under the PM Suryaghar Yojana for residential rooftop solar systems in the state so far.

Under the Net Zero Buildings Initiative, Mahindra Group and Johnson Controls have launched a cost-free toolkit that will help building and facility owners to learn about the best practices of sustainable buildings, implement tools to assess building parameters, identify and implement conservation measures, and understand building regulations in India, available incentives, technology, financing models, and more.