Residential PV

The Australian Energy Market Commission, Australia’s energy rule maker, today released its draft determination on how to integrate energy technologies like solar and batteries into the electricity grid. In the draft, the Commission revived its proposal for a solar tax, immediately stirring backlash.

Dutch research institute TNO has released a series of guidelines to reduce fire hazards in rooftop PV installations. The study follows a series of fire accidents that occurred between 2018 and 2020 in the Netherlands, for which the main causes were identified.

“Unprecedented” was a term widely used in 2020, as the world grappled with the Covid-19 pandemic. The same word can be similarly applied to the plans and investments in production capacity announced by Chinese PV manufacturers right across the supply chain. But what shape are these expansions taking and what is driving this renewed confidence? Vincent Shaw reports from Shanghai.

Rooftops will have to supply a third of the 524 GW of solar generation capacity needed by 2045 to reach a zero-carbon economy by mid century, according to an academic paper. The researchers also suggested green hydrogen should not play a central role in the nation’s energy transition.

The Australian Renewable Energy Agency is helping to fund a trial by Distributed Energy Resources firm UPowr which will monitor solar customers interested in incorporating a home battery system. The aim of the project is to better incorporate customer experience insights into the design of DER products.

Battery storage manufacturer RedEarth has partnered with a major Australian housing developer to offer new-home buyers solar and solar/battery systems tailored to their needs from the get go – and with the opportunity to sell excess energy at optimised prices where the grid needs it most.

Australian households delivered a record year for rooftop solar PV in 2020 with more than 350,000 small-scale solar systems totalling 3 GW installed across the country and the rapid growth shows no signs of slowing with the Clean Energy Regulator (CER) tipping another 4 GW could be installed before the end of 2021.

Not all rooftops can bear the weight of glass PV modules. Some others have curves and shapes ill-suited to uniform, bulky panels. Flexible modules have long been advanced as the solution here, however the keys to unlocking this potential have proven elusive.

Safety when transporting solar PV modules from warehouse to job site is an ongoing issue for installers but one Queensland solar company has designed and manufactured a simple yet effective racking system that helps allay those concerns.

Victorian electricity distributors Powercor and Citipower are setting out to alleviate grid congestion in area of high solar penetration, particularly in Western Victoria. The works are designed to increase the ability of rooftop solar owners to export solar to the grid amid the continuing uptake of residential solar.