Residential PV

Business magnate Elon Musk has avoided what would have been the largest judgment in US history on an individual executive.

Global solar supply chain issues and the Chinese energy crisis which hit in the second half of last year have, ironically, led to a “massive” oversupply of solar panels in Australia, according to major distributors. The tension between increased global panel costs and the glut of them within Australia has led to some messy pricing and strange market dynamics on the ground.

The amount of solar installers offering storage solutions grew considerably in 2021 and promises to surge again this year, according to an annual survey by EUPD Research. The research centre has also released the top three 2021 brands for solar modules, inverters and storage in the Australian market, offering insights into where companies are buying equipment and which segments are seeing the most growth.

Photovoltaics can wipe out 4.25 billion tonnes of carbon emissions every year this decade, according to the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Even so, the actions announced so far remain way short of what is needed, with capital flows to fossil fuels still greater than the cash directed toward combating climate change.

Homeowners who participate in a new Enphase pilot project will connect their home batteries to the US grid, sharing energy through Green Mountain Power’s distribution system in exchange for financial incentives.

Australia has one of the highest per-capita rooftop solar PV installation rates in the world with more than 16GW installed across more than 3 million households but the head of Australian research at U.S.-based analyst Bloomberg New Energy Finance has forecast a drop off in new installations in 2022.

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.