World

The Chinese string inverter giant was the world’s biggest supplier for the fourth year in a row, despite ceding 4% of its global market share, according to analyst Wood Mackenzie. Asia-Pacific was again the largest inverter market, accounting for 64% of global shipments.

Deployment of lithium-ion battery storage systems is growing rapidly, with Wood Mackenzie recently predicting that the U.S. market alone could be worth $4.7 billion within the next five years. Demand is rising for both grid-scale and behind-the-meter applications in a number of markets throughout the world, particularly in East Asia, the global hub of lithium-ion battery production. But a recent string of fires in South Korea – one of the world’s biggest markets for stationary storage, thanks to a concerted government push – has rekindled smoldering concerns about safety.

Like many areas in renewable energy, the operations and maintenance of large-scale solar power plants is becoming an increasingly sophisticated affair. Granular data gathered using hardware such as drones and thermal imaging equipment, in combination with complex analytics software, mean that service providers now have oversight of a plant right down to the performance of individual cells and components. A look at fault detection offers several examples of these trends in action.

Deployment of lithium-ion battery storage systems is growing rapidly, with Wood Mackenzie recently predicting that the U.S. market alone could be worth $4.7 billion within the next five years. Demand is rising for both grid-scale and behind-the-meter applications in a number of markets throughout the world, particularly in East Asia, the global hub of lithium-ion battery production. But a recent string of fires in South Korea – one of the world’s biggest markets for stationary storage, thanks to a concerted government push – has rekindled smoldering concerns about safety.

Themed around “Right to Energy,” the 4th TILA International Conference on Energy (TICE 4) held recently in New Delhi aimed to accelerate the pace of energy revolution through intensive deliberations and concerted initiatives among countries. Well attended by over 400 delegates, the international event highlighted that energy is going to be the next big revolution after telecom.

The world had more than half a terawatt of PV generation capacity at the end of last year as emerging solar markets picked up the slack caused by Beijing’s subsidy about-turn to the tune of a 20% rise in installations outside China.

All-electric buses will cost the same as diesel options by 2030 – and possibly earlier – according to research into the global EV market which highlighted the potential for India to follow China’s lead in the sector.

The transition for utility scale storage from offering short duration, high value grid services to the world of long duration energy peaking could spell the end of fossil fuel backup generation within five years.

This revived growth comes mainly from markets outside of China, which are forecast to rise by 43% in 2019.  While China will grow marginally by 2%, Europe will add over 7 GW with utility-scale installations in Spain alone contributing 60% of the growth in the region. The USA will overtake India to once again become the second-largest PV market.

Recent years have seen plenty of innovation when it comes to cell interconnection, and the tricks that manufacturers employ to boost output at this stage go well beyond simply adding more busbars, as in many new module concepts, these are forgone entirely. Synergies between cell interconnection and new innovations at other stages will also be key in shaping the modules of the future.