PV Tech Power Papers

Slowly but surely, China’s solar policy void is being filled with a 30GW auction at the heart of it. Carrie Xiao digs into the details as the draft proposals take the first steps towards official status.

Despite its coming of age from the days of state support, European PV remains at the mercy of regulatory whims. José Rojo examines how bureaucracy, grid bottlenecks and other pitfalls of government action can cripple solar as it becomes the driving force of a clean EU energy system.

As outlined on the previous pages, although still relatively embryonic in the solar industry, big data-based analytics innovations are already being deployed. Representatives from Enel Green Power, Aquila Capital and Pöyry discuss where their digitalisation efforts have so far been focused.

Big data-based predictive analytics techniques using artificial intelligence technologies offer exciting new possibilities in the field of solar operations and maintenance. Alessandro Betti, Fabrizio Ruffini, Lorenzo Gigoni and Antonio Piazzi examine how the power of data can be harnessed to safeguard the technical and economic performance of the PV fleet.

The advent of distributed generation and renewable energy sources is requiring a swathe of new regulatory standards to ensure safety and grid stability. Scott Picco, Laurie Florence and Tim Zgonena of UL look at some of the latest and upcoming codes designed to addressing the proliferation of battery storage systems and distributed energy resources.

A key missing piece in the clean energy puzzle is the question of how to provide baseload power in an electricity system dominated by intermittent renewables. Javier Cavada of Highview Power examines cryogenic long-duration storage as a possible solution.

In the hierarchy of grid needs, peaking power is often a priority in terms of providing resiliency and balance to the network. This is usually provided by natural gas turbines, which come at a high environmental and economic cost. Andy Colthorpe charts the rise of the solar-plusstorage peaker plant.

India has become the world’s second largest market for trackers as it chases its ambition of installing 100GW of solar by 2022. Geoffrey S. Kinsey, Madhusudan Partani, Mukund Kulkarni, Brijit Shetty, Rubin Sidhu and Jie Zhang report on efforts to better understand the performance benefits of trackers over fixed-tilt mountings

Light- and elevated temperature-induced degradation – LeTID – is emerging as a potentially serious problem affecting PV modules employing PERC technology. So why isn’t the industry more aware of it, ask Radovan Kopecek, Joris Libal and Lejo J. Koduvelikulathu of ISC Konstanz.

Solar O&M is rapidly evolving as PV deployment gathers pace worldwide. Guillermo Oviedo Hernández, Elena Bernardi and Jörn Carstensen of SolarPower Europe’s O&M Task Force look at some of the emerging trends, practices and business models in this increasingly critical arm of the solar industry.