Editors' Blog Grids

PV Tech looks behind last week's Indian government announcement that it would issue a 7.5GW solar tender in the high altitude mountain desert region of Ladakh.

While Filipino policymakers ponder a controversial bill that would allow a solar company to set up a micro-grid and transmission franchise aiming to improve power supply across the country, a small town on the island of Mindoro is already enjoying round-the-clock electricity for the first time ever.

PV Tech visits a mini-grid at a village in the heart of the North Indian plains to see how a bold mix of biomass, solar and energy storage technologies is transforming local businesses.

A number of international initiatives have helped large-scale solar gain a foothold in Africa. The question now is how the market for this segment will develop beyond these programmes and how much capacity grids will be able to support.

India’s unusual tender for 5GW of PV manufacturing capacity linked with 10GW of solar projects has been called many things, ranging from pioneering to fanciful, but the earliest stages have seen some of the global industry’s biggest names toss their hat in the ring.

Delhi-headquartered renewable energy firm Hero Future Energies has completed India’s first large-scale solar and wind energy hybrid project in the state of Karnataka. PV Tech reports from the inauguration and interviews Hero's chairman and managing director Rahul Munjal.

India’s large-scale solar space, which has been dominated by Solar Parks in the last two years, now has standalone projects firmly back on the map with multi-Gigawatts of capacity up for grabs and a chance for higher risk-taking players.

What’s happened since First Solar indefinitely postponed an MVDC transition?

The case for solar remains strong in Southeast Asia since power demand is still growing rapidly in many of its markets, but traversing the unique regulations and policies of each country and knowing which PV segment is most suitable remains challenging. Here are some of PV Tech’s key takeaways from last week’s Solar and Off-Grid Renewables Southeast Asia (SORSEA) 2017 conference in Bangkok, Thailand.

Going to Indian courts over renegotiations of solar power purchase agreements (PPAs) can be a costly and time-consuming process, but is this where the trouble ends?

With the world’s first solar-powered airport, as well as India’s first solar education centre and floating PV projects, the state of Kerala has been a frontrunner in innovation and now its industry has an eye on a hugely ambitious rooftop solar goal - KREEPA Green Power Expo 2017.

What does it mean to be all things to all people? Does it overstretch resources to breaking point, or does it give you a chance to cast a wider net and capture market share? Vivint Solar recently joined Tesla in a race to offer whole packages including solar, storage, EV charging and other components to US customers. We talked to GTM Research's Brett Simon on some of the dynamics of those parallel strategies.

PV Tech’s new two-day event PV ModuleTech 2017 – in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, on 7-8 November 2017 – is set to outline the key issues in new high-efficiency PV modules that will dominate utility-scale solar farms deployment globally over the period 2018-2020.

Over and over again, at last week’s PV Expo trade show in Tokyo, PV Tech heard that those that will survive in Japan’s PV market will be the ones in it for the long haul. Andy Colthorpe spoke to industry observers and participants to get an inside look.

GreenWish Partners, a competitive and reliable renewable power provider with headquarters in Paris and across Africa, has been successful in implementing utility-scale PV plants in Africa. With a mission to demonstrate the potential of renewable energy to fuel the economic and social development of the continent, the company is well on its way to achieving its 600MW of installed capacity in Africa goal. GreenWish caught up with PV Tech to discuss the key ingredients in achieving such a feat in a region where large-scale projects have traditionally been difficult to commission.