China

The GCL System chief executive made comments that fly in the face of an expected solar gold rush in China that analysts predict will start this month. Though rising overseas demand will address overcapacity fears, according to Luo, the soundbite is sure to chill PV boardrooms across the world’s biggest solar market.

Solargiga highlighted the fact safeguarding duty has recently been reduced in India when considering solar opportunities around the world as part of its first-half update to the Hong Kong stock exchange.

The energy storage company is ramping up R&D efforts to try and fast-track commercialization of the more productive – and more expensive – battery tech. The news was announced as part of an uninspiring first-half update thanks to falling lithium salt prices.

While China hosts the lion’s share of production capacity for solar modules, many other parts of the world harbor the ambition to build manufacturing industries of their own. Italy’s Ecoprogetti is building production lines all over the world in 2019, and pv magazine had the chance to catch up with the family-owned company’s CEO Laura Sartore, who sees India and the Middle East as the key markets for the PV production equipment business.

The two nations have signed an MoU to set up the capacity in the north of Bangladesh along with 50 MW of wind power facilities in the south, near the port of Payra. China will supply an estimated $500m with the host nation freeing up land for the projects.

As demand for atomic layer deposition equipment spreads among Chinese solar cell manufacturers, experts throughout the industry are sharing their insight on the merits of this emerging manufacturing technology. The numbers they crunch reveal tough competition for incumbent plasma-based deposition techniques. But beyond the hype, does atomic layer deposition truly offer the better deal?

Deploying commercial and industrial PV in China without subsidy is already profitable in some areas, according to a new study, but prohibitive soft costs and cheap electricity are the main barriers for such installations in areas where grid parity remains out of reach.

The energy storage market is set to be the latest affected by Trump’s trade war as lithium-ion batteries were excluded from the group of Chinese imports for which the U.S. president announced tariffs would be delayed until December 15.

The global installed capacity will grow from a modest 9 GW/17 GWh as of 2018 to 1,095 GW/2,850 GWh in the next two decades. Just 10 countries will account for almost 75% of the overall gigawatt market, with China, USA, India and Germany leading the pack.

The cost of solar power generation in India has fallen to half the level seen in many other markets in the region due to extensive solar resource, market scale and competition.