Residential PV

New Zealand’s federal government has opened the final funding round in its NZ$14 million (AU$13 million) Māori Housing Renewable Energy Fund, open to small and larger-scale projects.

The rollout of rooftop solar in the remote coastal town of Broome in northern Western Australia is set to get a boost with state-owned regional energy provider Horizon Power installing two centralised community batteries that are expected to unlock more than 1,400kW of solar PV hosting capacity.

In the fourth quarter of 2021 alone, solar developers added 3.2GW of new PV installations in India.

Australia has set renewable energy records for the fifth consecutive year with new data showing clean energy accounted for nearly one-third of the electricity produced in the National Electricity Market in 2021, with the continuing roll out of rooftop solar PV spearheading the switch away from traditional fossil-fuel generation.

Risen Energy has extended the product warranty on its Australian residential modules from 15 to 25 years. The news comes just weeks after SunPower Maxeon pushed the Australian market by increasing its new warranties to 40 years.

Scientists in Australia have developed an optimisation framework for building-integrated photovoltaics that allows the selection of design variables according to user preferences. Their model considers PV-related features such as tilt angle, window-to-wall ratio (WWR), PV placement, and PV product type, as well as objective functions and constraints such as the net present value and the payback period.

More than 3 million Australian households and small businesses have voluntarily installed rooftop solar systems but a local council in New South Wales is looking to mandate the continued rollout, investigating the potential for all new homes built in its region to be required to have solar PV panels on the roof.

Chinese manufacturer Bslbatt has unveiled a modular lithium-ion battery that can be used for the off-grid storage of solar energy. The device has a storage capacity ranging from 5.1 to 30.7 kWh and is claimed to provide steady operation for up to 6,000 charge cycles.

One of Australia’s largest residential and commercial solar PV retailers and installers has announced it will exit the market, declaring low margins and once-in-a-generation disruptions to the supply chain brought on by the Covid-19 pandemic have taken a toll.

South Australia will extend its ‘Switch for Solar’ program in which eligible low-income residents can opt to have a solar system installed in exchange for their next ten years of government concession payments.