World

Scientists in France conducted an analysis on the competitiveness of water desalination, taking a large scale project planned for Morocco as a case study. The research concludes that PV without storage is the cheapest option to power desalinators, and will likely remain so until at least 2030.

The global newly installed PV capacity for this year would be around 115 GW–5% more than that of 2019 despite the Covid-19 crisis. India will add just 4.9 GW due to strong Covid measures taken.

New analysis released by Lazard compares the levelized cost of energy for various generation technologies on a $/MWh basis and shows that renewables, specifically utility-scale solar and wind, are the economic frontrunners.

Acme Solar ranks eighth with 2.556 GW of cumulative generation capacity to date, and Adani Green Energy (2.421 GW) ninth in the list, which has First Solar and Canadian Solar on top. Azure Power, Tata Power, Greenko Energy and NTPC are the other Indian developers among the top 36.

Finding tiny cracks in a silicon solar cell is not that easy, particularly given that these cracks initially have little or no effect on module performance. But a number of common occurrences in a module’s lifetime can cause cracks to grow, rendering whole areas of a cell useless. And this is increasingly being recognized as one of the most significant risks to module reliability – one which the PV industry is hard at work to mitigate.

Analysts at Mercom Capital Group have tallied up corporate funding, venture capital and debt and public market investment for battery storage, smart grids and energy efficiency companies. From a financial perspective, the industry appears resilient to the Covid-19 crisis and ready to grow further.

A new report by Wood Mackenzie suggests that rapid solar module technology innovations in the next decade will lead to significant increases in module power class, better performance and more versatile applications. Technology and lower capex will be key to sector growth, it adds.

PV module makers are under growing pressure to increase the power output and longevity of their products, which leads in some cases to rapid changes in the technologies and materials they utilize. pv magazine recently sat down to speak with Kaushik Roy Choudhury and Mark Ma of DuPont Photovoltaic Solutions about the changing landscape for quality in solar PV materials.

Launched in November 2015, the alliance aims to collectively address key challenges to the scaling up of solar energy in member countries that fall between Tropic of Cancer and Tropic of Capricorn. The Alliance is now supported by 68 member countries, and a further 20 countries are in the process of becoming members.

Although the Wiki-Solar website ranking only provides a snapshot of PV project engineering, procurement and construction contracts outside of China, it is nevertheless a useful indicator of the changing global solar market landscape. Swinerton was the largest solar EPC contractor outside China in 2019. Of the top 11 companies, three are based in India, three in the United States, another three in Spain and two in the United States.