As 2019 draws to a close, PV Tech reflects on the year’s most impactful stories in the solar economy. Liam Stoker starts by looking back at the first three months of the year, when there was a major subsidy U-turn in China and the first of many manufacturing expansions.
SECI approves scheme that will see annual PV batches of 500MW deployed potentially anywhere in India every year until 2025, with supply underpinned by PPA with US$0.041/kWh tariff.
Operators tell PV Tech of large-scale growth expectations for next year regardless of minor subsidy drop for large-scale and residential PV, proposed in latest government draft.
During the past few years, the migration from multi to mono, replacing Al-BSF p-type cells with rear passivation layers (PERC), and having the capability of bifacial light absorption, have been the very obvious technology shifts seen within the PV industry.
Chinese firm boasts of dominance in the continent and market hold in Southeast Asia and Australia as deliveries reach the three-digit-gigawatt threshold across the globe.
Capital expenditure (capex) for c-Si manufacturing (covering ingot/wafer and cell/module stages) is forecast at approx. US$9 billion in 2019, consistent with levels seen during 2017 and 2018.
LONGi Green Energy Technology Co, the largest monocrystalline wafer producer has announced major plans to further expand its ingot and wafer capacity past 2020.
NEXTracker has introduced its smart single-axis solar tracker family, 'NX Gemini’, which enables two-module-in-portrait (2P) tracking of either monofacial or bifacial PV modules. The next-generation two-module-in-portrait (2P) tracker is optimized for customer sites with hard soils, challenging terrain, irregular parcel shapes and high-wind requirements.
Delivering 103MWp Midden-Groningen within eight months involved installing 315,000 panels, setting up biodiversity-friendly areas and linking the plant directly to the Dutch grid.
US court blocks administration’s scrapping of Section 201 tariff exemption to give Invenergy time to wage legal battle against u-turn, a dispute the judge feels Invenergy is likely to win.
