The first full year of the Inflation Reduction Act in the US has seen a flurry of transactions completed as solar developers and now manufacturers take advantage. Jonathan Tourino Jacobo looks at some of the emerging trends and future prospects in this lucrative new market.
Policies in the EU and US to impose a carbon price on imported materials and goods will inevitably hit solar manufacturers. Corrine Lin and Sherry Hsu assess where these costs will land and how the industry should be adapting in preparation.
University of New South Wales' Bram Hoex discusses why stability is as important as the higher efficiencies offered by cell technologies such as TOPCon and HJT.
With the expected increase in annual photovoltaic production capacity beyond 1TWp/a (terrawatt-peak per year), the emphasis on novel, next-generation production technologies gains significance from the perspective of potentially lowering production costs as well as increasing sustainability by reducing the resources required in manufacturing. The focus of this work is to analyse the impact of high-throughput (HTP), next-generation silicon solar cell production technologies, as developed within the framework of the NextTec research and development project, on the required i) amount of equipment, ii) capital expenditure (CAPEX) and iii) labour, herein termed as key performance indicators (KPIs), for a solar cell production facility with an annual capacity of 10GWp.
Earlier this month the agriculture minister, Francesco Lollobrigida, announced a plan to "put an end to the wild installation of ground-mounted photovoltaics" on land classified as agricultural land.
The EU and US are leading efforts to reduce the carbon intensity of PV manufacturing through targeted import tariffs. As well as supporting decarbonisation efforts, such policies could also promote geographic diversification in the solar supply chain and greater supply resilience, writes Michael Parr of the Ultra Low Carbon Solar Alliance.
