Preview Newsletter
sfce 10/13
-
Taiwan to prosecute seven solar firms for ‘threatening’ officials
Oct 12, 2015 | PV-Tech
By John Parnell
Taiwan is to press charges against seven solar firms that allegedly “lobbied, threatened and pressured” officials from the ministry of economic affairs. -
Large-scale U.S. solar could get ugly, at least to some
Oct 13, 2015 | GreenBiz
By Phillip Warburg
If the United States and the world community hope to avoid the worst effects of climate change, solar power will have to play a pivotal role in electricity production. -
65% Prefer Wind Turbines To Fracking Wells In UK Poll
Oct 13, 2015 | Clean Technica
By Jake Richardson
A UK poll of 2,000 people found that 65% would prefer wind turbine technology located near their home, rather than a fracking well. While this result is not too surprising, about 14% said they did prefer the fracking wells to wind turbines. -
African Renewable Energy Offers Alternative To ExxonMobil
Oct 13, 2015 | Triple Pundit
By Tina Casey
According to ExxonMobil CEO Rex Tillerson, fossil fuels are the only affordable fuel that can challenge “energy poverty” in emerging economies with fast-growing populations. -
SunEdison Layoffs Pose Questions About Clean Energy’s Future
Oct 13, 2015 | Triple Pundit
By Leon Kaye
Despite the low prices of fossil fuels, the clean energy industry is still growing, with utility-scale wind power projects and residential solar installations catching on worldwide. -
SolarEdge Targets Australia As Key Energy Storage Market
Oct 13, 2015 | Clean Technica / RenewEconomy
By Sophie Vorrath
Among the many inverter and battery storage technologies on show at the All-Energy Australia conference and exhibition last week in Melbourne was a few of the latest offerings from Israeli inverter company, SolarEdge. -
Heraeus collaborates with Sunrise Global on PERC cell performance maximisation
Oct 13, 2015 | PV-Tech
By Mark Osborne
Metallisation paste producer Heraeus Photovoltaics has partnered with Taiwan-based solar cell producer Sunrise Global Solar Energy, a subsidiary of wafer producer Sino-American Silicon Products to maximise cell conversion efficiencies of its monocrystalline PERC cells beyond 21%. -
NSP’s solar cell shipments hit new peak
Oct 13, 2015 | PV-Tech
By Mark Osborne
Major Taiwan-based merchant solar cell producer Neo Solar Power (NSP) has reported a new peak in solar cell shipments for the year in September.
Industry News
Full Text of Stories Below
-
Taiwan to prosecute seven solar firms for ‘threatening’ officials
Oct 12, 2015 | PV-Tech
By John Parnell
Taiwan is to press charges against seven solar firms that allegedly “lobbied, threatened and pressured” officials from the ministry of economic affairs.
Deputy director-general at the bureau of foreign trade David Hsu,told local reporters that the companies had been found to be mislabelling products made in mainland China as made in Taiwan, prior to export to the EU.
“Not only do the accused have no regrets about what they have done, they have also allegedly lobbied, threatened and pressured ministry officials,” said Hsu.
The European Commission opened an investigation into solar products imported from Malaysia and Taiwan after SolarWorld, the German company behind the European complaint over alleged dumping by Chinese firms, provided sufficient evidence of changing trade patterns and that existing measures – namely the price undertaking – were being “undermined”. SolarWorld alleges that Chinese manufacturers are circumventing trade duties and the restrictive price undertaking agreement in place with Europe, by exporting via Malaysia and Taiwan.
The latest allegations follow the fining of the companies earlier in July and the introduction of new export rules that give the bureau greater oversight into the trade of goods linked to anti-dumping cases such as bicycles.
Earlier this month, a Taiwanese legislator claimed that just one company had been found to be mislabelling products and that it was an “isolated” incident. Taiwan will soon be putting its case to the European Commission.
-
Large-scale U.S. solar could get ugly, at least to some
Oct 13, 2015 | GreenBiz
By Phillip Warburg
If the United States and the world community hope to avoid the worst effects of climate change, solar power will have to play a pivotal role in electricity production. The technology is quickly maturing, and the price of solar panels has plummeted to the point where new utility-scale solar installations are a sound investment, cheaper than new coal plants and frequently competitive with natural gas. In 2014, solar power accounted for almost one-third of all new U.S. electric generating capacity. If the right policies are adopted, solar power could be the leading source of electricity worldwide by 2050, according to the International Energy Agency (PDF).
As the adoption of solar power goes mainstream, the challenge now is finding enough space to harness the sun’s energy. For solar power to cut substantially into our reliance on fossil fuels, major solar projects will have to be built on a noticeable portion of the landscape. There inevitably will be environmental impacts. Already, large-scale solar projects have created unexpected and unsettling fault lines within the American environmental movement — conflicts that will have to be resolved with creativity and compromise if we are to wean ourselves off fossil fuels.
In one camp are those who see solar power as a noble use of our non-urban land, even if that means encroaching on farms and natural areas. The alternative, they say, is runaway global warming caused by the continued burning of carbon-based fuels — a far worse outcome than the construction of industrial-scale solar projects. This group makes the same argument for the widespread deployment of wind turbines.
Others see sprawling solar projects as blights on the landscape and threats to wildlife. Their concerns about protecting vulnerable species and natural open spaces have deep roots in the American conservation movement, and they cannot be discounted. But the danger is that they underestimate the devastation likely to be caused by climate change and overestimate the energy that can be generated from solar panels on rooftops and on smaller parcels of urban and industrial land.
The United States is blessed with a vast reservoir of open spaces, but we are also burdened by an ideological and aesthetic aversion to seeing those open spaces encroached upon. In Europe, clean energy proponents tend to encounter a more pragmatic public response that allows for integrating wind farms and solar fields into landscapes that often have been affected by human activities for centuries or even millennia. Widespread acceptance of offshore wind farms across much of Northern Europe reflects this more tolerant regard for large-scale renewable energy facilities, in contrast to the diehard resistance that U.S. offshore wind proposals have encountered.
To supply all of America’s electricity from the sun, the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) estimates that solar installations would have to occupy about 0.6 percent of the country’s total land area. That’s equivalent to less than 2 percent of U.S. land now in crop production, but it’s still a big stretch of terrain, almost the size of West Virginia. While this is far more solar than a balanced renewable energy economy would require, it is a useful gauge of solar power’s land needs.
Roughly one-fifth of our total power supply (PDF) could come from rooftop solar arrays, NREL said. Additional solar electricity can be tapped at "brownfield" sites — abandoned and often-polluted industrial properties that are not suitable for residential or commercial use. Brownfield solar projects are being developed in many parts of the country, but these sites are often costly to convert and have a hard time competing with larger solar projects on less encumbered lands.
Construction of utility-scale solar facilities has soared since 2010, accounting for almost two-thirds of all newly installed photovoltaic capacity in 2014. A big reason for this is the much lower cost of building these projects: In the first quarter of 2015, utility-scale power plants based on photovoltaics (PV) cost less than half as much per installed watt as residential rooftop PV, and 29 percent less than solar power installed on commercial buildings.
But unless Congress extends the federal investment tax credit for solar power beyond 2016, commercial and utility-scale projects that now enjoy a 30 percent credit will face a much lower 10 percent credit, and the residential solar tax credit will be eliminated entirely. Under those circumstances, utility-scale solar power may have a tough time competing with new natural gas plants, although the cost advantage of utility-scale solar projects over smaller installations is likely to persist.
As its advocates note, solar power produces none of the climate-altering carbon emissions or health-endangering air pollutants of coal or natural gas, and none of the hazards associated with nuclear power. Utility-scale solar projects do, however, occupy hundreds and sometimes thousands of acres. Fortunately, recent experience demonstrates that large-scale solar power can be developed in a manner that minimizes damage to the environment.
One important step is to favor farmland over undeveloped open spaces when siting large solar projects. No agricultural area may be better suited than California’s drought-stricken Central Valley. Building big solar projects there could be a double win, amping up the state’s supply of renewable energy while introducing a dry energy crop in place of the water-hungry cotton fields and sod plantations that farmers no longer have enough water to irrigate.
There are many other parts of the country where photovoltaic panels may be the highest and best use of agricultural land, especially on fields that lie fallow or depend on government support to remain in cultivation. Large solar projects already have been built on farmland in states as varied as Arizona (PDF), Minnesota and North Carolina.
In some states, the same not-in-my-backyard reaction that has stymied a number of wind farm proposals is now plaguing solar energy developers. Upscale suburbanites in Bedminster, New Jersey, are waging a war of attrition against a solar plant that has been proposed for a moribund farm near their homes. Photovoltaic arrays will be a visual blight on a cherished agrarian landscape, some residents claim. The Bedminster parcel was long ago rezoned for 10-acre country mansions, which neighbors have declared they would rather look at than a solar plant — despite the developer’s claims that the proposed solar arrays would be screened by a grassy berm and natural foliage. While visual aesthetics have fueled this particular battle, New Jersey’s strong farmland preservation policy is likely to deter the widespread adoption of solar power in other, more actively farmed parts of the state.
Tensions can run equally high when solar projects are proposed for natural areas, such as the patch of New Jersey forest where Six Flags Great Adventure has sought to build a solar farm. Those who object to this 90-acre project apparently give little thought to the 1.4 million acres of mountains and forests that mountaintop removal coal mining in Appalachia will have destroyed by 2020. They are focused on concerns closer to home.
But solutions to the green energy and land conservation conflict can be found. In a number of places, solar developers have anticipated conservationists’ concerns by paying meticulous attention to wildlife and habitat protection. The Moapa Band of Paiutes in southern Nevada set a strong example when the tribe created a separate, 6,000-acre conservation area for 75 desert tortoises found on a 2000-acre site it had selected for solar development. This 250-megawatt project, slated for completion in June, will sell its output to the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power, supplying the electricity needs of 100,000 households. Today the tribe is well along with the planning of a second solar plant on a slightly smaller scale.
San Jose-based SunPower has been similarly vigilant in developing its California Valley Solar Ranch (PDF) on the semi-arid Carrizo Plain, sometimes referred to as California’s Serengeti. San Luis Obispo County officials (PDF) and a trio of national environmental organizations negotiated a rigorous set of environmental safeguards for the project. Before construction began, biologists hired by SunPower created new dens for the San Joaquin kit fox, temporary condos for giant kangaroo rats and wildlife corridors allowing pronghorn and Tule elk to pass easily through the solar fields. Solar arrays sit on 1,400 acres of land, producing enough power for 100,000 homes, and 12,000 additional acres have been set aside for conservation in perpetuity.
Thanks to the California Valley Solar Ranch and many other plants generating power from solar, wind, geothermal and other qualifying sources under the state’s Renewables Portfolio Standard, roughly one-fourth of California’s retail electricity (PDF) today comes from renewable energy. Under state law, investor-owned utilities and other electric service providers must supply 33 percent of their power from renewable sources by 2020, and if Gov. Jerry Brown has his way, half of California’s electricity will come from renewable energy by 2030.
To meet this ambitious goal, diverse groups are debating the governor’s Desert Renewable Energy Conservation Plan, which would devote roughly 177,000 acres of farmland and open spaces to clean energy projects and related transmission. Under the same plan, large stretches of the Mojave and Sonoran deserts would be dedicated to conservation and recreation.
This is just the kind of innovative problem-solving with public participation that can advance renewable energy on a large scale while protecting the environment.
Green energy advocates may have thought their most formidable foes would be defenders of the fossil fuel status quo. They hadn’t counted on so much friendly fire from traditional allies in the conservation community. But projects such as the Moapa Paiute installation and the California Valley Solar Ranch show that, done right, solar development can address habitat protection and wildlife concerns.
The truth, however, is that clean energy is not without costs, and decarbonizing our energy supply involves making tough choices. Wide swaths of terrain will be needed if we are to capture the sun’s vast energy potential. Figuring out a responsible way to install renewable energy projects on that land is vastly preferable to the alternative — a world under siege from climate change.
-
65% Prefer Wind Turbines To Fracking Wells In UK Poll
Oct 13, 2015 | Clean Technica
By Jake Richardson
A UK poll of 2,000 people found that 65% would prefer wind turbine technology located near their home, rather than a fracking well. While this result is not too surprising, about 14% said they did prefer the fracking wells to wind turbines.
ICM for Co-operative Energy conducted the polling and also found that solar power was the most preferred source of electricity, with 30%. Only 2% said they preferred shale or gas from fracking.
“There is a real appetite amongst the general public to see renewable energy grow and prosper, but with more emphasis on community energy schemes which allow local communities to share the rewards,” explained Ramsay Dunning, from Co-operative Energy.
About 47% of those polled said they support paying a small fee to encourage renewable energy.
The British Geological Society has published a list of potential problems with fracking:carbon dioxide (CO2) and methane (CH4) emissions, particularly the potential for increased fugitive CH4 emissions during drilling compared with drilling for conventional gasthe volumes of water and the chemicals used in fracking and their subsequent disposalthe possible risk of contaminating groundwater competing land-use requirements in densely populated areasthe physical effects of fracking in the form of increased seismic activity.
It’s a very obvious and arguably even a silly point to say that wind turbines have none of these potential issues, except the land needed for locating and operating them. Wind turbines seem preferable in almost every way to fracking, so one might say the polling was of a rhetorical nature.
Currently, the UK gets about 40% of its electricity from burningnatural gas, which proponents have pointed out produces less air pollution than using coal power plants. However, fracking support has declined considerably. (A recent studyconducted in the US found some public health problems related to fracking.)
It seems very typical for these situations involving the use of conventional forms of energy and renewables to be framed as arguments or even fights. What often happens is that they are both used simultaneously, so the rancor that surfaces on either or both “sides” of the political discourse is too often unnecessary or sort of irrelevant.
-
African Renewable Energy Offers Alternative To ExxonMobil
Oct 13, 2015 | Triple Pundit
By Tina Casey
According to ExxonMobil CEO Rex Tillerson, fossil fuels are the only affordable fuel that can challenge “energy poverty” in emerging economies with fast-growing populations. Africa is one such case, and it presents a tantalizing market for ExxonMobil’s wares. However, according to a new international report, African renewable energy resources can be tapped economically at a rapid clip, fulfilling 22 percent of the continent’s overall needs by 2030 — more than four times the 2013 mark of just 5 percent.
If that goal seems overly ambitious, guess again. According to the agency behind the report, IRENA (the International Renewable Energy Agency), affordable new technological advances could enable African renewable energy to beat fossil fuels to the punch.The IRENA report on African renewable energy
The new African renewable energy report, titled Africa 2030, provides a roadmap for transitioning an entire continent into modern renewable energy technology.
In contrast to Tillerson’s view, IRENA Director-General Adnan Z. Amin maintains that Africa’s abundant renewable resources are the key to ensuring energy access:
“Tapping into renewable energy resources is the only way African nations can fuel economic growth, maximize socio-economic development and enhance energy security with limited environmental impact. The technologies are available, reliable and increasingly cost-competitive.”
Here’s a rundown from IRENA on the daunting task ahead, given the rapid pace of growth that is already transforming many African nations:
“The continent’s total electricity consumption increased 650 percent between 1971 and 2013, from 80 terawatt-hours to 600 TWh, and this growth is expected to continue. Over the next 25 years, electricity demand will triple in Southern Africa and quadruple in Eastern Africa … Less than 25 percent of households in sub-Saharan Africa have electricity access, a percentage which drops as low as 10 percent in rural areas.”
In particular, Africa 2030 describes how the continent can replace the equivalent of more than 341 megatons of coal with renewable energy in the power sector. In other words, that would mean a 50 percent share of power generation for renewables, including solar, wind, biomass, hydropower and geothermal.
The unsustainable use of biomass of for cooking is another key area of focus, with public health concerns running apace with environmental sustainability. IRENA foresees a solution in new technology:
“The report estimates that a shift to modern renewable energy cooking solutions would reduce the use of traditional cook stoves by more than 60 per cent, saving US$20 billion to $30 billion annually by 2030 through the reduction of health complications from poor indoor air quality.”African renewable energy: ExxonMobil vs. U.S.
As Amin notes, following through on the recommendations of Africa 2030 is a matter of government policymaking. That’s a pretty tall order considering that ExxonMobil is one of the top oil producers in Africa, where it pitches itself as the “Energy for Growth” company.
However, recent improvements in renewable energy technology are driving down prices, which could help to damper the persuasiveness of ExxonMobil’s “foreign policy” efforts.
Helping things along are international initiatives such as U.S. President Barack Obama’s Power Africa renewable energy initiative, which counts another global behemoth — General Electric — among its supporters.
When Power Africa launched in 2013, GE Chairman and CEO Jeff Immelt had this to say:
“With 7 in 10 people in Africa still lacking access to modern electricity, reliable power is critical to unlocking the region’s economic and human potential. GE supports the Power Africa Initiative which provides leadership in addressing this vital need — a win for economic development in both Africa and the U.S.”
Power Africa has been fulfilling its mandate. In a July 2015 Power Africa update, the Obama administration noted progress in several key areas.
Among the highlights, Benin is signing a compact with MCC, the U.S. Millennium Challenge Corp., for a $375 million initiative involving 78 megawatts of generating capacity, or about a third of the country’s overall demand. That includes 45 MW of utility-scale solar as well as infrastructure investments and policy commitments.
The update notes progress on four “priority projects” undertaken by OPIC(the Overseas Private Investment Corp.), another U.S. government financing agency. These include commitments for two wind energy projects in Kenya and two thermal energy projects in Senegal and Ghana, all four totaling more than 700 MW of renewable energy generation in sub-Saharan Africa.
A third highlight mentioned in the update consists of new USTDA (U.S. Trade and Development Agency) early-stage funding for a 50 MW solar plant in Nigeria and a 2 MW microgrid in Tanzania. USTDA is also providing funding for an energy storage market assessment aimed at propelling renewable energy adoption continent-wide.
-
SunEdison Layoffs Pose Questions About Clean Energy’s Future
Oct 13, 2015 | Triple Pundit
By Leon Kaye
Despite the low prices of fossil fuels, the clean energy industry is still growing, with utility-scale wind power projects and residential solar installations catching on worldwide. And despite the oil and gas industry’s stranglehold on political power — evident in fossil fuel subsidies across the globe — clean energy companies overall still very much have the wind at their backs. Even stodgy organizations such as the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the International Energy Agency (IEA) are bullish on the future prospects for renewables.
Nevertheless, the industry is still enduring its share of growing pains, asSunEdison’s current struggles demonstrate.
SunEdison had been riding high this year, with a market capitalization soaring to almost $10 billion just three months ago. But investors’ confidence had been wavering long before SunEdison reached what was a historic milestone for the company. Acquisitions of firms including First Wind and Vivant Solar worried analysts who saw that $4.6 billion buying spree create a sudden spike in SunEdison’s debt-to-equity ratio.
Not everyone was worried: The company attracted copious amounts of praise for becoming the world’s largest clean energy development company, and the MIT Technology Review, in fact, listed SunEdison as sixth in its rankings of the 50 Smartest Companies. But Wall Street became skittish over SunEdison’s fundamentals, and as July turned into August, its stock lurched into a rapid tumble.
In July, SunEdison’s stock price had hit an all-time high of $31.84 a share. It had fallen as low as $6.56 a share in late September before hovering at its current price of about $9; in turn, the company’s market capitalization has taken a steep nosedive to what is now an estimated $2.6 billion.
Meanwhile, SunEdison’s transactions hardly slowed the company’s spending, whether it was to fund its countless divisions or to wow attendees at signature clean energy industry events. In addition to the financial strains, this newly assembled company also faced its share of work culture challenges as evident in the Vivant acquisition. Too many on the outside had become nervous about the rapid changes ongoing at SunEdison.
The recent pushback by investors has resulted in SunEdison’s decision to tighten its belt. Last week the company announced it would take several steps in an attempt to “optimize business operations in alignment with current and future market opportunities.” SunEdison has said it will focus on what it sees as lucrative markets in regions such as the U.S., China, India and Latin America. The company also promises it will “rationalize purchased services” in the name of greater efficiency. Furthermore, SunEdison has pledged to “remove duplicative activities.”
Key to this optimization is layoffs. SunEdison’s restructuring will result in a 15 percent reduction in its workforce. The company expects to take a short-term financial hit as it will incur charges of anywhere from $30 million to $40 million in the next quarter, with most of those funds going toward severance packages for fired employees.
The troubles besetting a marquee company such as SunEdison will certainly amp up catcalls from those who are skeptical about clean energy’s future. But reports of the demise of renewables are still far too early.
SunEdison simply became a company with too much on its plate. The organization had become many things, including a financier, a battery storage tech incubator, a project developer and an asset management company. Now SunEdison will have to sell off some its projects that are not a fit with this restructured firm, and that will certainly have an impact on a pipeline about which the company bragged comprised a total of 2 gigawatts of future clean energy capacity.
SunEdison’s recent foibles aside, many multinationals and governments will continue to invest in renewables in the coming decade and far into the future as they become more cost-effective and scalable. The private and public sectors are both intent on securing a lock in energy prices, keen on ensuring energy security and are determined to meet their sustainability goals. SunEdison’s setbacks, while certainly daunting, will most likely be a mere hiccup on clean energy’s slow but steady path toward becoming an even more relevant and lucrative industry.
-
SolarEdge Targets Australia As Key Energy Storage Market
Oct 13, 2015 | Clean Technica / RenewEconomy
By Sophie Vorrath
Among the many inverter and battery storage technologies on show at the All-Energy Australia conference and exhibition last week in Melbourne was a few of the latest offerings from Israeli inverter company, SolarEdge.
SolarEdge, which like many other big players in this sector, has lately turned its focus to developing inverter technology that supports solar power storage and smart management, and has targeted Australia as a key market in this space.
Its StorEdge product, which was launched in Australia at the Melbourne event on Thursday, is exactly that: an inverter solution that supports batteries – or at this stage, the well-hyped 7kWh Tesla PowerWall – allowing residential solar customers to store and use as much of the energy they generate from their rooftop PV as possible, and to monitor this via an energy management interface.
“Australia is one of the markets where self-consumption systems make a lot of sense,” said Lior Handelsman, SolarEdge’s vice president of marketing and product strategy, in an interview with RenewEconomy on the sidelines of the All-Energy conference.
By this he means that, with high electricity prices and low feed-in tariffs, it makes sense for those households that already have solar installed, or are planning on installing it, use as much of their solar electricity as possible, instead of selling back to the grid for a fraction of what they pay for grid power.
“I wouldn’t say it is ‘use it or lose it’,” said Handelsman, “but it is ‘use it or almost lose it’.”
It is not an insignificant cost to add storage, he adds, but the advantage is that it instantly makes the solar energy you are generating worth around five times more.
Handelsman explains: “So what the storage platform does, the inverter has a metering function, it measures the amount of electricity the home consumes, and then whenever it is that there is more production than consumption, instead of feeding energy into the grid, it will store it into a battery… and then, after the sun goes down, or any time you have more consumption than production, that battery is used to maximise self-consumption.”
As to the cost of the SolarEdge StorEdge system, Handelsman couldn’t say exactly what the cost would be in Australia, but said it would mostly be made up of the cost of the Tesla battery, and might add between $4-5,000 to the cost of a rooftop solar system.
“You buy the storage platform, our inverter, our meter, you connect that to the solar system – using our power optimisers on the roof – and then you have the Tesla battery, or in the future other batteries.. to maximise self-consumption,” he said.
Of course, the Tesla battery is not yet available in Australia, but Australian customers of SolarEdge, as a partner with the California-based company, will be prioritised once they are ready to be dispatched here, according to Handlesman.
“What we tell people is that they can basically buy the SolarEdge part of the system now, and add the battery later,” he said.
Handelsman also said that one of the reasons his company chose Tesla as its first partner for the roll-out of its StoreEdge product was that the PowerWall was an “outdoors product”, whose lithium-ion chemistry did not – unlike most of its competitors – deteriorate rapidly in performace at above 25°C or below 5°C.
Another product SolarEdge was launching at the All-Energy event on Thursday was its 26.7kW HD Wave commercial-scale inverter, an incredibly lightweight specimen – 16 times lighter than the next smallest and most efficient inverter in the industry, which is 25kg – due to its use of digital technology in place of heavy magnetics.
“Inverter evolution has been slow,” said Handelsman, on a technological growth trajectory he compares with televisions.
“The evolution of TVs was also slow, because televisions had this huge tube inside, as well as glass and other large and heavy components.
“But eventually, someone found a way to make flat screen TVs and they very quickly become larger, lighter, higher quality and cheaper.
“We think (the HD Wave) is a revolution in inverter technology,” he said. “The only thing limiting us from making it smaller is the processing power. But in two years, processing power will be cheap, too.”
“Inverters are becoming smarter and smarter, more grid interactive, more user friendly… starting to incorporate batteries and energy management,” Handelsman told RE.
In just a couple of months, he added, it will be standard issue that “when you get to the point that you have a full battery, inverters will start using the excess PV to turn on appliances in the home,” to heat and cool it, or to heat water, as a back-up form of energy storage.
“Australia is a focus market for us,” he said. “It’s already the third-largest residential market in the world, after Japan and US.
“And inverters are not yet a commodity market, which allows me to compete.”
“It’s a very interesting market. It seems to be, today, stable, in the sense that the regulatory environment is clean.
“I think the market is a good market, it’s an evolved market, it’s a market that appreciates value. It’s a very competitive market, also, but you can’t be afraid of competition.”
To this end, Handelsman says SolarEdge has more than doubled our team in Australia in recent months, establishing a larger, new office in Melbourne.
He says, for now, the focus is on Australia’s residential energy storage market, which he says will eventually be a strong market driver.
“And we have one of then best storage offerings in the market. And then our commercial inverter for the commercial market is also going to compete very nicely.”
Elsewhere in the world, Handlesman describes the UK – and more broadly, a lot of – as a market with some question marks around it.
“It’s been a very, very good market, but there are concerns that it’s going to decline dramatically due to the feed-in tariff cuts there.
“I personally think it’s going to be a market where solar makes sense even without the incentives, but, you know, all markets react the same to incentive cuts. There is a psychological loss aversion mechanism (that kicks in) and people stop buying.
In terms of storage, the reduction of feed-in tariffs is good news, he clarifies. “But any cuts of any incentive in any market has at least a six-month negative effect. It’s psychology. Loss aversion is a very strong mechanism.”
-
Heraeus collaborates with Sunrise Global on PERC cell performance maximisation
Oct 13, 2015 | PV-Tech
By Mark Osborne
Metallisation paste producer Heraeus Photovoltaics has partnered with Taiwan-based solar cell producer Sunrise Global Solar Energy, a subsidiary of wafer producer Sino-American Silicon Products to maximise cell conversion efficiencies of its monocrystalline PERC cells beyond 21%.
The companies are planning to optimise front side metallization paste formulations on Sunrise Global’s proprietary CELCO cells that are PERC (passivated emitter rear contact) based to push average cell efficiencies to 21.0%.
Heraeus Photovoltaics said it would work to customize their mainstream SOL9621 Series paste for Sunrise Global’s PERC cell design.
Dr. Weiming Zhang, Senior Vice President Research and Development, Heraeus Photovoltaics said, “Achieving maximum performance from cell designs cannot occur from innovation alone, which is why we relentlessly focus on a rapid R&D and commercialization strategy. We’re very excited to partner with Sunrise to jointly develop front-side metallization pastes and to advance future performance of their PERC product line because they share that same fast-track mindset.”
Sunrise Global was said to have already achieved peak cell efficiency of 21.5% in mass production of p-type monocrystalline cells.
The cell producer is also responsible for starting solar cell production (200MW) at SAS subsidiary in Germany, aleo solar.
Heraeus Photovoltaics SOL9621 Series paste has claimed a world-record PERC efficiency of 21.7%.
Heraeus is also introducing new products such as the SOL9621P, which is a front-side paste designed specifically for PERC application.
Heraeus will also introduce its customised paste SOL9350C for p+ surface contact, which has demonstrated 0.1% higher cell efficiency and SOL9621L, which is specifically designed for n-type applications.
-
NSP’s solar cell shipments hit new peak
Oct 13, 2015 | PV-Tech
By Mark Osborne
Major Taiwan-based merchant solar cell producer Neo Solar Power (NSP) has reported a new peak in solar cell shipments for the year in September.
NSP noted that expected demand for solar cells in the fourth quarter will continue to increase due to increased demand in China as result of the recent hike in the government quota system for PV installations by a further 5.3GW to around 23.1GW.
The company reported September 2015 sales of NT$1,893 million (US$58.3 million), down 4.3% from the previous month, said to be due the sale of a PV power plant built and sold by its subsidiary, GES.
NSP also said that further PV power plants would add to sales in the fourth quarter.
The company does not provide solar cell shipment figures on a monthly basis.
Industry News
Full Text of Stories Below
Add recipients
Suggested