copper

The Australian Renewable Energy Agency (ARENA) has committed AU$25.3 million (US$16.53 million) in funding to support PV cell technology startup SunDrive Solar's continued development of copper-based solar cell technology.

Wood Mackenzie has warned of a supply bottleneck as the renewable energy shift drives a spike in global copper demand over the next decade.

PV Talk: AIKO's chief scientist, Yongqian Wang, tells PV Tech Premium that copper is now a “highly suitable” alternative to silver.

Fraunhofer ISE has developed a solar cell which uses “one-tenth” of the amount of silver as a standard cell.

The two-pronged attack of vastly growing solar capacity and the shift to n-type technologies has converged to make silver a real pressure point for future solar manufacturing.

The Australian Renewable Energy Agency (ARENA) will invest AU$11 million (US$6.9 million) in Australian solar technology company SunDrive Solar to support the commercial scale-up of SunDrive’s novel solar cell metallisation technology.

The International Energy Agency's latest report shows that increased demand for solar PV could drive significant demand for copper worldwide.

PV Tech Premium talks to Solarcycle’s co-founders about their company’s unique ability to extract every single constituent material out of an end-of-life PV module, how solar panels are not lasting as long as people expected, the race to prevent solar waste being illegally dumped across the globe, and how modules can have a useful second life.

Australian start-up SunDrive has secured A$21 million (US$13.2 million) in a Series A fund that will help commercialise its solar technology.

Buy aluminium and steel when possible in order to accumulate stock and hedge against continued price rises for both. While the price of nickel has undergone a “short squeeze”, copper is likely to continue trading sideways in the near term and there is no immediate risk to silver supply.