Manufacturing

Investment and forecast revenue from Australian resources critical to low-emissions energy technologies has grown dramatically in 2022, federal government reports find. The forecast export earnings from critical minerals has grown 50% in the year, while hydrogen projects now make up the nation’s largest single component by value, though in a highly speculative form.

US researchers have proposed the use of solar inverters in utility-scale solar assets to replace expensive voltage compensators, in order to provide voltage support at night. They said reactive power from PV inverters could be significantly cheaper and suggested the introduction of incentives to convince PV plant owners.

Australian company GenusPlus Group has been awarded a $15 million (USD 9.9 million) contract with Fortescue Future Industries (FFI) to design and construct a 275 kV substation at FFI’s Green Energy Manufacturing Centre in Gladstone, Queensland.

Adani has selected Engineers India Ltd. (EIL) to set up 30,000 metric tons (MT) of polysilicon production capacity and 500 MT of monosilane capacity in India.

Chinese-Canadian PV manufacturing heavyweight Canadian Solar said it will begin mass production of 690 W TOPCon products in the first quarter of 2023. The modules will feature a cell efficiency of 25.0% and a bifaciality factor of more than 85%.

Researchers in South African have developed a new cleaning system for solar panels that uses a colour-sensing light-to-frequency converter to detect dirt. It can reportedly remove about 95% of the dust from a PV panel in less than a minute, at a lower cost than other systems.

A reduction of silver consumption in PV production is required on the way to terawatt scale. Given this, the time may have come for the commercialisation of new copper plating technologies – doing away with the need for silver in cell metallisation altogether. However, the history of plating technology is littered with cautionary tales.

Australian modular solar manufacturer 5B has secured a $20 million (USD 13.7 million) investment from the venture arm of British energy giant bp which will allow it to accelerate the development of its preassembled and relocatable modular solar technology.

Moving with Australia’s Zeitgeist, Stuart Parry, managing director of Energy Storage Industries, is working to bring battery manufacturing onto Australian shores – and his approach is, if not novel, certainly well advanced. “It’s about being smart in how we do it,” Parry tells pv magazine Australia.

Growatt’s new 6 kW inverters have an efficiency rating of 93% and offer 12,000 VA of surge power, up to 500 V of input voltage, and 8 kW of PV input capacity.