World

Cash grants and state-backed loans to support solar and battery storage installations in millions of UK homes as part of government Warm Homes Plan. UK government says investment has the potential to triple the number of homes with rooftop solar by 2030.

While global solar corporate funding in 2025 fell to the lowest level recorded since 2020, deal count rose to its highest level since 2017. Mercom Capital Group says investors favored smaller, lower-risk, execution-ready projects last year amid policy uncertainty, trade pressures and higher financing costs.

Rising silver prices are pushing PV manufacturers toward copper-based metallization, with DK Electronic Materials targeting 2026 for large-scale deployment of high-copper paste solutions, while Fraunhofer ISE warns efficiency trade-offs remain unacceptable.

China’s PV manufacturing sector is operating at full capacity ahead of an April 1 export tax change, contributing to module price increases of 20% to 30% in parts of the supply chain and raising risks for price-sensitive European commercial and utility-scale projects in early 2026.

United Solar Holding has secured more than $900 million to complete the financing required for its 100,000 MT polysilicon manufacturing facility in Oman. Production is expected to begin during the first quarter of this year.

The European Commission is revising its Cybersecurity Act. While presenting the proposals in European Parliament, the commission’s Executive Vice-President for Tech Sovereignty, Security and Democracy, Henna Virkkunen, said dependency on a very limited number of solar inverter suppliers could “pose a significant security risk.”

Iola Hughes, Head of Research at Benchmark Mineral Intelligence, tells ESS News that 2026 is set to be another strong year for BESS, with forecast additions exceeding 450 GWh and no material supply constraints in sight. Meanwhile, the initial impact of rising lithium prices is already visible at the cell level, but the full effect has yet to ripple through to system pricing.

Researchers in China developed a novel two dimensional (2D) seeding agent to regulate crystallization in a 1.80-eV wide-bandgap perovskite film. A perovskite-silicon tandem device made with the resulting optimized subcell achieved an efficiency of 31.13%, outperforming a control device.

Egypt’s Kemet has signed three agreements with Chinese companies over the last week, covering plans for a 5 GW solar cell complex, a 5 GWh battery energy storage factory and Egypt’s first solar inverter factory.

Once considered isolated incidents, spontaneous glass breakages in solar modules are becoming more frequent, highlighting the limits of some manufacturing choices and the need for closer quality control.