Asia

‘Dual circulation’ has one thing in common with many other major Chinese policy initiatives in that it’s not immediately apparent from its name as to what it means. First raised during a Politburo meeting in May, President Xi introduced this new strategy at the annual ‘Two Sessions’ later that month. It is clear that China’s leadership intends dual circulation to become an important part not only of China’s policy agenda for the next 12 months but to also feature prominently in the upcoming 14th five-year plan (2021-2025).  

South Korean manufacturer Clenergy has unveiled a new mounting solution for PV panels installed in balconies. The structure is adjustable to different types of commonly-sized balconies with metal railings.

A group of German scientists has analyzed the possible trajectory of carbon nanotubes (CNTs) in photovoltaic research and industry and has suggested a roadmap to bring this technology closer to mass production. Despite a large number of challenges, the academics predicted a brilliant future for CNTs in PV applications, explaining that the barriers to their adoption are constantly being reduced.

The Sumitomo Corporation has reported a stunning ¥26bn (US$251m) loss on its Western Australian Bluewaters coal fired power investment. The loss assures the company’s worst ever annual performance and comes as a result of international and financial pressure against coal funding.

Mobile electricity storage systems (MESS) – batteries that are charged and then transported – could offer one of the best scenarios for electrification across the vast Indonesian archipelago, which spans more than 17,000 islands. A team at the University of Indonesia is working with multiple government agencies to bring the idea to scale and provide affordable electricity to rural Indonesians.

It’s been a busy couple of months in global energy and climate policy. Australia’s largest trading partners – China, South Korea and Japan – have all announced they will reach net-zero emissions by about mid-century. In the United States, the incoming Biden administration has committed to decarbonising its electricity system by 2035.

It remains unclear why Chairman Jin Baofang was detained, but the company said its operations will not be affected. The Paper, a Chinese state-owned media outlet, reported that Jin’s detention might be connected to the fall of Liu Baohua, the formal deputy director of the National Energy Administration, which has also been under investigation by the anti-corruption authorities since mid-October.

Researchers have modeled how the combination of a virtual oscillator control mechanism and a cascaded sliding mode control can help regulate voltage and frequency in a distributed-solar microgrid.

The centralised nature of policymaking in Beijing would enable component standardisation to ease the transition from EV to stationary energy storage use, according to Greenpeace East Asia.

Earlier this year, Singapore surpassed its 2020 target for 350 MW of installed PV, and has set itself a more ambitious goal of 2 GW for the coming decade. pv magazine recently spoke with Thomas Reindl, deputy CEO of the Solar Energy Research Institute of Singapore (SERIS) – and also the lead author of a 2020 update to the institute’s PV Roadmap for Singapore report – to catch up on the latest developments in the city-state’s PV market.