Modules & Upstream Manufacturing

The London-based analyst has published a series of clean tech predictions for the year which also highlighted the rising proportion of sub-5MW solar projects in the global market, and cheaper clean energy financing costs even as panel prices continue to rise.

A Spanish consortium is equipping one of Madrid’s largest metro and bus stations with a hybrid system that combines PV, geothermal pumps, and vanadium redox flow batteries to provide cooling and heating.

With Australia’s unstoppable clean energy transition picking up pace, the question of jobs and how to reskill fossil fuel workforces is again at centre stage. Over the weekend, the Victorian government announced an initiative to encourage women to enter the male-dominated industry, while the federal government announced it would begin delivering reports on energy sector jobs to avoid skills shortages.

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.

The Victorian government will fund a floating solar project, an initiative to locally manufacture solar batteries, and install a portable renewable energy system for community services during emergencies as part of its Latrobe Valley program.

Researchers in Saudi Arabia have fabricated an integrated fully PV-powered system to extract fresh water from the atmosphere. The system uses excess heat from the solar modules to evaporate and condense water that can then be used to grow crops. Part of the water is also used to cool down the solar modules through an active cooling technique.

US analyst Clean Energy Associates made some notable predictions in its Q4 survey of the world solar manufacturing market, including echoing predictions made elsewhere that the new polysilicon production capacity coming online now will help arrest the spike in solar panel prices.

The merits of pre-assembled and modular solar solutions have been showcased by independent power provider Nomadic Energy which this week revealed it had taken less than 21 days to complete a 2MW install at Northern Star Resources’ Carosue Dam gold mining operation near Kalgoorlie in Western Australia.

Fortescue Future Industries says the first electrolysers to be manufactured at the facility, early next year, are earmarked for use in Queensland at FFI’s planned green-hydrogen-to-ammonia project on Gibson Island.

Origin Energy has announced plans for a potential Hunter Valley Hydrogen Hub underpinned by a deal it’s made with mining and infrastructure company Orica.