Market Watch

Quality | The speed of solar deployment in India has raised concerns that quality maybe sacrificed for expediency. As Tom Kenning reports, although there are warning signs of a potential quality problem, efforts are underway to nip it in the bud.

It’s always nice when someone tells you directly that you can’t do something to set out and prove them wrong. Photovoltaics International, its sister title PV-Tech.org and their publisher Solar Media were told in the early phases of planning the inaugural PV CellTech conference, that pulling together a string of CTOs and R&D heads from the some of the biggest firms in the cell processing supply chain would not be possible. Following the event’s second outing in March 2017, we have now done it twice.

Intersolar preview | The need for ongoing innovation is one of the few givens in the unpredictable solar business. Ben Willis speaks to two of the lead organisers of Intersolar Europe about the likely big topics on the show floor this year and what those tell us about industry’s continuing evolution.

France | With Europe in search of another PV poster child, an Emmanuel Macron-led France looks all but set to truly embrace the solar revolution. But will it learn from the mistakes of other boom markets that have preceded it?

Market update | Mexico as yet has only a small installed base of solar PV. But with widely lauded market reforms beginning to take effect, and a succession of highly competitive tenders under its belt, this is a market whose time is about to come. Danielle Ola reports

Tom Kenning looks at the latest trends from some of the world’s most promising emerging PV markets. This issue features Turkey, Algeria, Saudi Arabia and Malaysia

Utility-scale PV | Since the fall of former prime minister Tony Abbott two years ago, the prospects for large-scale solar in Australia have enjoyed a dramatic turnaround. Tom Kenning reports on the changing fortunes of the industry and how storage looks set to become a key partner technology for utility solar.

Having installed more than 75 gigawatts in 2016, the solar industry continues to create opportunities for cell and module manufacturers to expand capacities, while upgrading technologies and improving process flows. Supply remains dominated by p-type crystalline silicon modules, despite ongoing research into n-type variants and the addition of PERC on p-type mono cells. The efficiency increases from p-type mono are now driving p-type multi cell producers to accelerate changes to production lines from both black silicon and PERC. This is now setting new benchmarks for the supply of solar modules in 2017 to utility-scale solar installations.

Market update | Japan’s solar market has slowed considerably since the early days of its feed-in tariff. But as Andy Colthorpe reports, its fundamentals still look strong and there areplenty of promising policy drivers in the pipeline to keep demand buoyant.

Trade wars | The EU-China trade row appears to be entering its swansong but its impact has been eroded and overridden by global solar market dynamics. We look at the divisive policy’s future as it plays catch up.