In the first of a two-part feature Joseph C. Johnson, technology and quality senior analyst at Clean Energy Associates, explores recent polysilicon price volatility and its impact on the upstream solar sector.
As China enters its usually frantic solar build-out season, a shadow is being cast by module price hikes and supply bottlenecks. PV Tech’s Carrie Xiao gets the inside scoop on how solar deployment in China risks being pushed into next year.
Single-axis solar tracker manufacturer Soltec will supply its SF Utility tracker equipment to the Floresta solar PV power plant in the state of Rio Grande do Norte, Brazil.
At present, power utilities are designing and testing several applications of the blockchain technology. The crypto-currency called “SolarCoin” aims at accelerating the solar PV energy production. Florent Andrillon, Arthur Arrighi de Casanova and Louise de Brémond d’Ars of Capgemini Consulting take a look at how it works.
While third-party outsourcing of solar PV module assembly has been a constant feature of the PV industry for many years, the landscape of suppliers and the country of manufacturing has changed radically in the past two years, and will continue to do so out to the end of 2018.
Major PV energy provider SunPower has said that demand for its PV modules exceeded supply and that its PV project pipeline has topped 7.5GW, boosted by around 300MW of secured projects through its majority shareholder, the oil giant Total.
In a detailed research report from Deutsche Bank, China’s PV demand, driven by the utility-scale market is growing significantly faster than previously expected.
