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GoodWe has developed a new inverter product line designed for small commercial and industrial PV projects.

United States=based solid-state battery developer ION announced it has achieved 800 cycles with its battery, marking significant progress towards commercialisation. If this trend continues, the development holds promising potential for grid-scale projects.

The International Energy Agency projects that solar will attract more investment than all other electricity generation sources combined. Global energy spending is set to surpass $4.59 trillion (USD 3 trillion) for the first time this year.

The Swiss Army knife qualities of lithium-ion batteries have helped scale the technology. Now their ubiquitous nature means they are ideally placed to help electricity system operators balance the grid, argues Gerard Reid, co-founder and partner of Alexa Capital.

Scientists in Europe have created an after-market cooling solution that can be fitted to existing standard PV modules. The system is based on a water chamber placed at the backside of the module and can reportedly provide a net electrical energy gain of more than 9%.

Researchers in Malaysia have proposed a new approach to identify the optimal power sizing ratio to balance PV energy capture with inverter costs. The calibrated model is said to accurately reflect the relationship between inverter efficiency and real-world system behavior.

Global tracker shipments reached 92 GWdc last year, according to WoodMackenzies’ latest report, with three United States-based manufacturers, Nextracker, Array Technologies and GameChange Solar, ranking as the three largest shippers in the world.

As bifacial modules proliferate, estimations of albedo are becoming more important and with developers not prepared to install weather stations to assess solar resource, a popular option has become third-party, on-site measurements over periods as short as a day. Is this an acceptable compromise between costly on-site measuring and less accurate satellite data? Everoze’s Stefan Mau discusses the potential benefits and limitations of this approach.

The third edition of the Sinovoltaics financial stability report ranking lists India-based Abhishek Corp, Insolartion Energy, Waaree Renewable Technologies, and Solex Energy, all based in India, followed by United States-headquartered First Solar as the top five. Six additional manufacturers entered the global ranking.

Multiple factors affect lifespan of a residential battery energy storage system. We examine the life of batteries in Part 3 of our series.