World

Plummeting costs, industry maturity, and the ever-increasing penetration of global renewables are expanding the use cases for battery storage technology. Over the past year and a half, storage projects are increasing significantly in both scope and capacity.

With half-cut, bifacial, shingle cell, and heterojunction designs being deployed at the scale of hundreds of megawatts, it is an exciting time to be in solar cell and module technology.

The Solar Energy Corporation of India has invited bids to set up 1.2 GW of grid-connected solar under the fifth phase of its national interstate transmission system program. The projects – to be established on a build, own, operate basis – will be awarded through e-bidding and a reverse auction with a tariff ceiling of Rs2.65/kWh. Bidding closes on July 31.

There is a sense in the PV cell and module market at the mid stage of 2019 that the push towards high-efficiency cell architectures is accelerating. This makes the case for half-cut cells in a module more compelling, and the quality of the cut edge vital – argue laser process suppliers.

A report on the prospects for a mooted $2.6tn electric vehicle market over the next decade says PHEVs – part electric, part gas-guzzling – are already losing market share rapidly to pure electric rivals, and will be extinct by 2030.

Starting its journey as a department within Mahindra Group’s solar EPC company Mahindra Susten, the newly formed comprehensive asset care company for renewable energy customers aims to reach a 20 GWp global portfolio by 2022 from 4 GWp currently.

Solar pioneer Philip Wolfe lists the world’s largest solar parks. In these articles, a ‘solar park’ is defined as a group of co-located solar power plants.

With PV’s cost declines, the growing question is: where to put it all, particularly in densely populated areas. Ingenuity to the rescue – a technology that took its first steps in 2007 is entering full market maturity. And its potential is rather impressive.

A team of researchers from Manchester University claims to have identified the dominant process causing light-induced degradation in silicon solar cells. The process, termed “trap-assisted auger recombination”, arises from a defect in the bulk of the silicon material which lies dormant until exposed to sunlight.

Dustin Mulvaney is a solar industry veteran. Associate professor at the Department of Environmental Studies, San José State University, in the United States, he recently published a new book this April, Solar Power, Innovation, Sustainability, Environmental Justice, which looks at creating a “more sustainable and just solar industry for the future.” A part of this is the creation of a new global sustainability module standard. He spoke with pv magazine as part of the launch of our new UP initiative.