Residential PV

Powershop has been fined $300,000 after Victoria’s Essential Services Commission found the energy retailer was offering solar customers more expensive electricity plans than non-solar customers.

The database brings together photovoltaic performance data and meteorological values from PV systems located in all climate zones. It is being built by an international consortium including the Fraunhofer Centre for Silicon Photovoltaics CSP, and the Anhalt University of Applied Sciences.

Company Solahart, which originated in Perth, has delivered a heartening snapshot of solar Australia. It found the country deploys renewable energy 10 times faster per capita than the global average, four times faster per capita than in Europe, China, Japan or the U.S.A. Solahart examined what motivates different demographics of Australians to install solar and which parts of the country are most suited to solar.

Solar installer Jake Warner has received surprising feedback from his customers after he chose to transition his company, Penrith Solar, exclusively to microinverters two months ago. “What I found is actually the opposite to what I expected,” Warner told pv magazine Australia.

Annual battery storage installations will exceed 10 GW/28 GWh in 2021, following a particularly strong year in 2020, despite the challenges created by the global pandemic, writes IHS Markit analyst Mike Longson. Combined solar and storage will be a core focus for new deployment in 2021, as the front-of-the-meter and behind-the-meter energy storage markets are both expected to grow significantly in the months ahead.

South Australia’s electricity distributor SA Power Networks has announced plans to introduce new ‘flexible’ export limits for rooftop solar PV in some areas of the state in a bid to manage the growing amount of distributed energy resources and associated network congestion.

India had installed 6.8 GW of cumulative rooftop PV capacity by the end of 2020, with consumer-owned systems accounting for about 72% of the total, according to Bridge to India.

Pandemic uncertainties have concentrated key solar players and “heightened competition for ‘survival of the fittest'”, says JinkoSolar Chairman and CEO Xiande Li. The company’s latest figures show it is well placed in Australia and in the global arena.

Concerned that a lack of understanding in the community is hindering the uptake of rooftop solar, a New South Wales local council has struck an agreement with the Australian Energy Foundation in a bid to demystify solar PV and battery energy storage systems.

Commercial installation and service provider Solar Professionals will install almost 3 MW of solar PV across the rooftops of more than 800 homes in New South Wales after landing a new contract with the Aboriginal Housing Office (AHO).