Trina Solar has announced the global launch of ‘TrinaPro Mega,’ the latest version of its PV utility-scale complete turnkey product solution featuring modules with power output exceeding 500W, notably its ‘Vertex’ ultra-high-power module, launched earlier in 2020.
A small-scale trial of solar energy trading between households in Western Australia has found that peer-to-peer (P2P) energy trading is technically feasible and that virtual power plants (VPPs) could help deliver a lower cost grid.
US residential solar firm Sunrun is to aggregate 300 domestic solar-plus-storage installations into a single virtual power plant (VPP), claiming it to be one of the US’ first residential VPPs.
The use of unmanned aerial vehicles in solar operations and maintenance can reduce costs and save hours of painstaking labour, but only if applied correctly. Aline Kirsten Vidal de Oliveira, Mohammadreza Aghae and Ricardo Rüther explore the optimal use of aerial inspections and emerging methods for analysing the data they gather to identify faults.
Two of California’s Community Choice Aggregators (CCAs) have signed a power purchase agreement (PPA) with 8minute Solar Energy for a 250MW solar PV plant with 150MWh of battery storage.
Chinese inverter manufacturer KSTAR has introduced its new ‘All-In-One’ single-phase storage solution’, the BluE-S-5000D series, which combines KSTAR inverters with a CATL battery solution. The latest KSTAR hybrid solar system provides power continuously, without any interruption, as the powerful CATL batteries store the energy.
Vectren, owner of utility firms in the US states of Indiana and Ohio, has unveiled plans to ditch more than 700MW of coal generation and partly replace it with up to 1GW of solar PV.
Copenhagen Infrastructure Partners has already raised €1.5bn of €10-14bn CI IV vehicle, set to back wind, solar and others across OECD states, developed Asian nations and Australia.
The global solar industry could enter the terawatt era by as early as 2022, but only if national governments set appropriate, post-COVID stimulus measures in motion.
