SPI Day 3: solar tools, solar modules, electrical panel upgrades, future inverters, more!
Nineteen thousand people walked the floor at the United States’ largest *energy conference* – not just solar power conference – and it is a bit sad to end, but the education, handshakes, and hardware were great.
On the floor at SPI – touchless snow removal, perovskite tandem cells, gapless solar modules, more!
pv magazine USA is at Solar Power International in Salt Lake City, Utah this week and showing off some hardware from the floor. And most impressive is that innovation is still happening in solar modules, but also in many other complementary technologies.
Hanwha Q Cells opens the largest solar factory in the Western Hemisphere
The 300,000 square foot factory in Dalton, Georgia has the capacity to produce 12,000 PV modules per day, or 1.7 GW annually – the same peak generating capacity as the Hoover Dam.
First Solar exits the EPC business
Citing the wild success of its Series 6 module, First Solar has announced that it is closing its engineering, procurement and construction business in the United States in order to concentrate on scaling, developing, and selling modules.
Hardware: Q Cell and Solaria all black, Sunfolding’s summer body, NY sheep services, more!
Hardware, get your fresh hardware! SunPower is releasing energy storage, solar module pricing looks flat, and make sure to shake pv magazine hands as we walk the floor at Solar Power International in Salt Lake City next week!
The blackest black for more efficient solar cells
MIT scientists claim to have created a material 10 times more black than anything witnessed to date. It is said to be able to absorb more than 99.96% of incoming light and reflect 10 times less light than other superblack materials. The invention may be interesting for the development of black silicon PV technology and carbon nanotube-based solar cells.
Soltec achieves 16.2% Bifacial Gain, Ohio State makes a potassium battery breakthrough: pvMB 9/18/19
Happy Wednesday, folks and welcome to the pvMB. Today we’ll be checking out 7 Michigan school districts moving to electric bus fleets, Extensible Energy’s virtual battery, net metering protests in The Big Easy and more.
Hardware brief: Sonnen gets smarter, tariffs biting harder, Vikram Solar’s new modules, more!
Only a couple of weeks until Solar Power International when we get to see the hardware in person – but for now, you get us! Kern Solar Structures galvanizes their steel well, a delta between 275 and 310 watt modules, and Solis is launching a utility scale inverter in the USA.
New technologies, new challenges: An interview with Jenya Meydbray of PVEL
In this interview, pv magazine talks with PV Evolution Labs CEO Jenya Meydbray about the new designs including heterojunction that will allow the solar industry to reach higher efficiencies, and the challenges entailed therein.
In lab secrets, Tesla is talking about 20-year lithium ion batteries
Researchers have found that over three years of testing lithium ion NMC532 graphite battery cells have the potential to stay structurally sound long enough for cars to reach greater than 1 million miles, and grid connected energy storage to last more than 20 years under daily use.
