According to China’s National Energy Administration (NEA), solar PV installations reached 52.83GW in 2017, up from 34.54GW in 2016, and accounting for around 50% of expected global solar demand last year.
An initial five-year R&D program is starting between the German-based Centre for Solar Energy and Hydrogen Research Baden-Württemberg (ZSW) and the Institut Photovoltaïque d'Île de France (IPVF) in Paris to develop next-generation flexible photovoltaics featuring copper, indium, gallium and selenium (CIGS) solar cells.
Multinational construction firm Skanska AB is to test semi-transparent perovskite solar modules from start-up Saule Technologies on commercial office buildings with the first applications planned to be installed in Poland in 2018.
Following an extensive research process over the past couple of weeks, we can now reveal the top-10 module suppliers (by shipment volumes) for the calendar year 2017.
After the significant upwards revisions made to global solar PV manufacturing capacity expansion announcements in the first half of 2017, which we reviewed in a previous blog, the third quarter was characterised by much more tempered plans.
Perovskite solar cell developer Oxford Photovoltaics said it was working with scientists at the new Helmholtz-Zentrum Berlin (HZB) innovation lab to further the optimisation of its perovskite cell materials for silicon heterojunction solar cell technology.
A preliminary recommendation from India’s Directorate General of Safeguards Customs and Central Excise to impose a provisional 70% safeguard duty on solar cells imported from China and Malaysia has been branded as “ridiculous” and potentially catastrophic, by PV industry members involved in finance, project development and analysis.
PV and electronics equipment manufacturing and automation specialist Manz AG said the 306MW CIGS module production plant for its Chinese partners, the Shanghai Electric Group and the Shenhua Group had started construction on January 4, 2018 and was expected to be completed by the end of third quarter 2018 with production expected to start in the middle of 2019.
