Leading thin-film module manufacuturer First Solar revealed its new-to-the-market and highly-anticipated Series 5 thin-film PV module at Intersolar last week.
The US is leading the charge for solar in North America, but its next-door neighbours, Canada and Mexico, are also pressing ahead with plans to boost deployment. Danielle Ola reports on the policy developments expected to underpin the growth of solar in the two countries.
PV energy provider United Photovoltaics Group, part of China Merchants Group (CMG), has completed and grid connected a 100MW CPV power plant in Shanxi Province, China as part of the Top Runner program that promotes leading solar technology adoption in the country.
The future for Tesla-SolarCity could lie in aggregating rooftop PV with stationary energy storage, EVs and other distributed energy resources, the head of energy storage market analysis at Bloomberg New Energy Finance (BNEF) has said.
The prospect of the ‘commoditisation’ of lithium-ion batteries is not likely to be as clear-cut as has been seen in the PV industry, one manufacturer has said.
Applied Energy Technologies (AET) announced that it has completed a 5MW solar installation project with Rosendin Construction Puerto Rico, in Juncos, Puerto Rico. The modules added to the project are Hanwha Q Cells 300W. The installation is expected to generate power to a Medtronic Pharmaceuticals site.
Bankrupt renewable energy developer SunEdison has sold its commercial and industrial rooftop solar PV portfolio in India to India-based solar installer Amplus Energy Solutions (Amplus Solar) for an undisclosed sum.
SolarEdge's Lior Handelsman explains some of the thinking and development processes behind HD Wave, which the publicly-listed Israeli company believes represents a significant leap forward for inverter technology. The product was launched at the beginning of the year, when Handelsman said in another interview for PV Tech that inverters can now "evolve at the speed of electronics, not mechanics".
Stringent energy efficiency rules for buildings would make it “almost a no-brainer” to integrate PV at time of construction and would “change the whole cost equation”, solar analyst Finlay Colville has said.
California utility Pacific Gas & Electric Company (PG&E) plans to increase investment in renewables, storage and energy efficiency beyond its current state mandates while simultaneously phasing out its nuclear power activity in California by 2025.
