World

What happens to a solar PV module after its expected 25-year operational life? With about 2 TW of rooftop and utility-scale PV already deployed worldwide, and a large number of them being retired before operating for 15 years, the amount of PV modules being discarded is growing every year.

The International Energy Agency’s latest report warns that failing to support integration at the point of deployment could jeopardise up to 15% of solar and wind projects by 2030. This shortfall would reduce their combined share of the global electricity mix by 5%.

Spanish PV company Soltec and Aplitop have partnered to develop a computer-aided design plug-in application aimed at simplifying the planning process and reducing earth-moving operations, measurements, and the relocation of solar trackers in ground-mounted PV projects.

It took eight years of field measurements for researchers at the RWTH Aachen University in Germany to estimate the usable capacity of home battery energy storage systems and develop a dataset covering 106 system years and 14 billion datapoints. Their key finding was that home battery systems lose about two to three percentage points of usable capacity per year on average, meaning good news for the industry as most warranties in the market can be met with the implementation of capacity reserves.

Sharp’s new IEC61215- and IEC61730-certified solar panels have an operating temperature coefficient of -0.29% per C and a bifaciality factor of more than 80%.

Envertech says it has developed microinverters for PV systems supporting up to 60 modules, allowing up to four modules per unit with separate maximum power point tracking.

This year’s UN Climate Change Conference could adopt a target to increase global energy storage capacity more than sixfold by 2030. To achieve this, the world would need to add more than 158 GW of energy-storage capacity annually.

SmartHelio has developed an AI solar forecasting tool with 98.5% accuracy, using socioeconomic details and climate data for predictive analytics.

Shipment volumes are growing in the global solar tracker market as innovation in project development drives demand. Joe Steveni, of S&P Global Commodity Insights, takes a look at the factors shaping the commercial landscape for trackers, from agrivoltaics and undulating terrain to Indian ambition and the United States’ Inflation Reduction Act.

New research from India shows how bifacial solar modules should be deployed to achieve strong performance in floating PV projects planned on tropical freshwater. Their experimental setup demonstrated that higher efficiency gains are achievable by gauging panel height, water depth, and tilt angle.