Weekly Update (Feb. 3rd)
Astronergy this week
1. Astronergy LATAM team, Marisol NeiraArdila and Francisco Alcalde, attended at IEEE Sección El Salvador forum. They introduced Astronergy and ASTRO series PV modules to all attendees and show for everyone a not-far-away solar power-enabled sustainable and net-zero prospect
2. Xuanyi Shi, our product manager shared our aim to achieve n-type TOPCon module capacity of over 34GW in 2023 at a virtual conference held by TaiyangNews. Said Shi, as a pioneer in mass production of TOPCon PV modules, the ASRTO N n-type TOPCon modules have enabled the advantages of high power, efficiency, high power generation performance and high reliability.
PV market brief news this week
1. TüV Rheinland opens solar module testing lab in China
TüV Rheinland announced it will open a new laboratory for solar module testing in Taicang, near Shanghai, China.
The German certification body said the new lab will be located at the Yangtze River Delta Operation Hub, which is now under construction, and will have a total surface of around 12,000 m2.
2. Germany launches tender for 1,950 MW of large-scale solar
Germany’s Federal Network Agency (Bundesnetzagentur) has opened the first round of a 5,850 MW tender for ground-mounted solar. The ceiling price has been raised to €0.0737 ($0.080)/kWh.
3. Italy allocates 94.2 MW of solar in latest renewables auction
Gestore dei Servizi Energetici (GSE), Italy's energy agency, has allocated 116.2 MW of renewable energy capacity in the country's latest renewable energy auction, for projects above 1 MW in size.
4. Turkey sets minimum price for solar cell imports
The Turkish government has set a minimum import price of $60/kg, so solar cell imports exceeding this threshold will be subject to import duties. The measure is designed to protect domestic cell manufacturers.
5. Sweden deployed 1 GW of PV in 2022
Sweden’s operational PV capacity hit 2.6 GW at the end of December, up from 1.6 GW a year earlier, according to provisional figures released by the Swedish solar energy association, Svensk Solenergi.
6. US to add 63 GW of PV by end 2024
Solar and wind generation are expected to reach 16% of the US grid’s supply this year, doubling the 2018 total, said the US Energy Information Administration (EIA). Solar capacity is expected to add another 63 GW by the end of 2024, an impressive growth of 84% in a two-year span. By 2024, solar may reach 6% of generation, while wind is expected to add 12 GW of capacity in two years, reaching about 12% of the total generation mix.
7. Netherlands posts another record year for residential PV in 2022
The Netherlands likely installed around 2 GW of new residential solar capacity in 2022, according to provisional statistics from Netbeheer Netherland, the Dutch association of power network operators.
8. Germany installed 7.19 GW of new solar in 2022
Germany deployed around 350 MW of new PV capacity in December alone. Its cumulative solar capacity reached 66.5 GW last year.
9. Portugal installed 890 MW of solar in 2022
Portugal’s cumulative PV capacity hit 2.59 GW at the end of 2022, outpacing the growth of other renewable energy sources. The country failed to meet its own installation predictions, likely because some large-scale projects awarded in the 2019 and 2020 auctions ended up missing their commissioning deadlines.
10. Brazil has 17 GW of distributed solar, with 32 GW under development
The Brazilian Association of Photovoltaic Solar Energy (ABSolar) says the country has reached 17 GW of installed solar capacity for PV projects below 5 MW in size. Over the past three months, connection requests for distributed-generation PV projects have hit 32 GW.
Eyes on PV tech
1. Scientists assess lifetime for perovskite PV to become competitive on rooftops
Researchers say that lightweight, high-performance perovskite solar modules could soon become competitive with crystalline PV modules in the residential segment, as such products will likely have lower manufacturing and balance-of-system costs in the future.
2. New way to calculate LCoE of perovskite solar
Researchers from the University of Pavia in Italy have made an initial attempt to define the criteria for developing a novel method to calculate the LCoE of perovskite solar cells. They said they are trying to clarify the many models and assumptions that are used by academics to determine LCoE values for PV technologies.
3. Spray passivation to reduce losses in TOPCon, HJT cell-to-module process
Chinese researchers have developed a new passivation technique for shingled solar panels based on tunnel oxide passivated contacts (TOPCon) or heterojunction (HJT) tech. It reduces recombination losses in the cell-to-module process and reportedly increases open-circuit voltage, fill factor, and efficiency.