Modules & Upstream Manufacturing

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.

In the second piece of rare earths news this month, construction has begun on Lynas Rare Earths’ new processing facility in Kalgoorlie. The refined products are used in batteries and other renewable technology, with Lynas moving the processing it currently does in Malaysia onshore for the first time.

Chinese inverter maker Growatt has launched Infinity 1500, a portable power station for off-grid applications.

For some developers of ground-mounted PV, bifacial modules are already the default technology. The slight cost increase is often outweighed by an increase in energy yield. And yet “agreeing” on the right energy yield of a PV plant has always been the most heated debate between developers, investors, lenders, and technical advisers. Everoze partner Christophe Campistron looks at both sides.

Over 90% of Australia’s fuel is imported – something recent geopolitical events have illustrated is a serious vulnerability. This issue was the focus of an emergency fuel security summit held yesterday in Sydney. The event was attended by a number of industry leaders and independent members and candidates who put forward solutions to tackle the devolving situation.

Nitin Gupta, chief executive officer and co-founder, Attero Recycling, speaks to pv magazine about the supply chain concerns for lithium battery storage manufacturing in India, current battery recycling scenario and Attero’s capacity.

The results from solar glass company ClearVue’s greenhouse trials at Murdoch University have found the company’s product performed better than predicted overall, demonstrating both strong power generation and thermal value.

TBEA-owned Xinte Energy says it cannot produce polysilicon quickly enough to meet demand and wants shareholders to back its bid to quadruple its manufacturing capacity by mid 2024.

Australia’s inventories of critical materials for batteries have seen major increases recently, with vanadium up 23%, lithium up 8%, rare earths up 4% and platinum group elements up 185% in the year to December 2020.

Academics from MIT and Stanford who have posited a new production method for perovskite solar cells have also developed a machine learning system which benefits from the experience of seasoned workers – and they’ve posted it online for anyone to use.