Asia

First Solar has announced plans to establish a new 3.3 GW manufacturing facility in India. Representing an investment of US$684 million (AU$950 million), the move demonstrates the thin-film PV manufacturer’s confidence in India’s solar growth and the increasingly favourable policy environment for domestic solar PV production.

Australia’s module supply landscape could experience a supply shock as legislation looms to stamp out the use of forced labor. Chris O’Brien, Maxeon Solar Technologies VP for the APAC region says that the measures that have left modules stranded at the U.S. border could very well occur in Australia soon.

Storing hydrogen in carbon nanotubes and other nanostructures is still far from reaching commercial maturity. A Japanese research team, however, has developed a new simulation technology that may help better estimate the energy needed to favour the ideal interaction between hydrogen and its storage material.

The 97%-efficient microinverter has a power output of up to 960 VA and APsystems claims it is the most powerful dual microinverter in the world.

The system combines software that applies a modulated electric current to the PV panels and an indium-gallium-arsenide (InGaAs) photodiode detector that takes a sequence of images of the panels. According to its creators, the proposed technique works with any lighting conditions and in all weather.

The Indian government has created a strong balance between industrial policy as well as trade policy, which provides companies like First Solar an ideal opportunity to establish their manufacturing facilities in India, according to First Solar chief executive officer Mark Widmar.

Adani, Reliance New Energy, Jindal India Solar and Shirdi Sai Electricals have been put on a shortlist for India’s production-linked incentive scheme for high-efficiency PV module manufacturing. The list includes 14 other companies vying for the incentives.

President Xi Jinping’s pledge this week at the United Nations General Assembly that China will not build new coal-fired plants abroad is welcome news; however, Asia’s transition to low carbon energies remains in dire need of policy reforms.

Singaporean scientists have developed a special device that prevents the formation of dendrites in lithium-ion storage. The additional layer they created works as an interface on behalf of the negative electrode, to exchange lithium-ions with the positive electrode.

The Australian-Singapore group behind a proposed 20 GW solar PV farm and 42 GWh battery energy storage project being developed in Australia’s remote far north has hinted other, similar-sized projects are already in the pipeline.