Quality

The disparity between central and state government renewables policies must be resolved and renegotiating signed PPAs is an absolute no-no, according to the solar business’ bosses.

The National Solar Energy Federation of India (NSEFI) is continuing to step up its efforts to ensure the quality of large scale solar projects. The body is now looking for stakeholder input into its new best practice guidelines for PV power plant projects, as a part of its ongoing Quality Taskforce initiative.

New analysis predicts more than 150 GW of tracker capacity will be installed in the next five years – around a third of all ground mount projects up to 2024. Rapid growth in Europe, the Middle East and Africa; and the better cost structures possible from combining trackers and bifacial modules are singled out as key trends.

A spokeswoman from the Chinese manufacturer of the Swan series of double-sided solar panels says monofacial modules will soon be consigned to residential use as the price gap between them and higher-yielding bifacial products rapidly closes.

pv magazine test is a cooperative module testing procedure involving pv magazine, CEA and Gsolar. All tests are carried out at Gsolar’s test laboratory in Xi’an, China. CEA supervises them and designed both the indoor and outdoor testing procedures.

With India losing major solar markets to stiffer competition from cheaper products, it’s high time to change the game by playing on quality and innovation—according to Vikram Solar Chief Financial Officer Rajendra Kumar Parakh, who spoke to pv magazine on the challenge of shrinking markets before Indian solar manufacturers.

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.

U.S.-based PV Evolution Labs (PVEL) has found that Vikram Solar’s Somera monocrystalline silicon and Eldora polycrystalline silicon PV modules met and exceeded international quality and performance benchmarks.

While Bureau of India Standards certification is a genuine attempt by the Indian government to mitigate the risks associated with poor solar module quality, there are several reasons why it is not 100% effective. pv magazine India’s Uma Gupta investigates India’s efforts to ensure quality in its booming PV industry.

After a detailed review of solar panels manufactured at Vikram Solar’s plant in West Bengal, US-based Black & Veatch concluded that its modules successfully meet the requirements of respective international standards.