Manufacturing

Photovoltaic inverter manufacturer Ingeteam has further cemented its place in the Australian solar energy market with the Spanish company announcing it has now supplied more than 2 GW of inverters across the nation.

As Christmas lights twinkled their last, South Australia’s electricity grid spent a whole day basking in sunshine and turning towards brisk summer breezes. Renewables ruled — a taste of future feasting on clean energy.

Since establishing its Australian subsidiary in 2012 JinkoSolar has substantially expanded its rooftop presence and, notably, its big-time contribution to the National Electricity Market.

A white paper published earlier in December by PV Evolution Labs investigates the formation of performance damaging cracks in PV cells, based on mechanical stress testing of more than 40 commercially available PV modules. While the lab warns that susceptibility to cracking will change according to the specific bill of materials making up each module, certain technologies are shown to perform better than others.

Perovskite developer Oxford PV has set a new world record for perovskite-silicon tandem cell efficiency at 29.52%, edging out the previous record set less than a year ago by Helmholtz Zentrum Berlin. The new record has been certified by the U.S. National Renewable Energy Laboratory.

The Chinese leader has revealed some details of his nation’s commitment to go carbon neutral by 2060. That solar and wind power promise could even prove to be a conservative estimate, according to the nation’s solar industry.

For the first time in years, the Australian Centre for Advanced Photovoltaics (APAC) has received a major grant. The Australian Renewable Energy Agency has funded APAC to the tune of $19 million with the goal of reasserting Australia’s place at the forefront of solar technology and accelerating the competitiveness of renewable energy.

Guarantees and warranties may be thought to deliver peace of mind, but when underperformance on rooftop systems is detected, diagnosing and demonstrating failures is no simple task. pv magazine’s Virtual Insight on Quality event in November tackled this issue from all angles – and what it means for Australia’s burgeoning rooftop segment.

With PV manufacturer warranties being extended and new novel designs coming on to the market at greater frequency, the quality assurance practices standing behind claims are becoming increasingly important. A new program from TÜV Rheinland is looking to provide the assurance that installers, distributors and project developers need – particularly in the hot and humid environments proven to push the boundaries of module durability.

IHS Markit released a white paper in which the analyst outfit shared some predictions for the power electronics market. First and foremost, inverters will become smarter, and after some power outages in key markets, these devices are gearing up to take on more grid stabilising tasks, which hitherto had been reserved for synchronous generators.