Chinese solar production juggernaut rumbles on
Three more PV manufacturers are announcing plans to invest in an expansion of production capacities — as the industry appears to make light of coronavirus fears.
Panasonic: ‘Eventually solar-plus-storage will be like air conditioning or HVAC’ but for now it’s an ’emotional sale’
“Brand is powerful — after a house and a car, a PV/storage system worth tens of thousands of dollars is one of the larger purchases a family will make.”
Morning brief: Oil billionaire pursuing perovskites, energy storage market to grow to $546 billion
Also in the morning brief: Arizona mandatory solar panel recycling bill, Sumitomo invests $46 million in long-term energy storage from Highview Power, and more.
‘Tesla and Panasonic are scrapping their partnership’ in solar cell production at the Buffalo factory
Elon Musk has spoken of the “exponential” ramp-up of its solar glass tile at the Buffalo factory. Panasonic’s tiles never made the cut for that product
Hanwha officially exits polysilicon business
Hanwha Solutions has confirmed that it will shut down its polysilicon business over the course of the next year, only a week after saying that it was still evaluating its plans for the sector.
Beijing to develop 500 MW of solar in Uganda
State-owned China Energy Engineering said the PV capacity will be developed in two phases in a deal worth $500 million.
The futurology of solar power: robots, hackers, 5G, cheaper modules, repowering, and really cheap electricity
Module efficiencies will continue to increase, while the price of an individual module will stay the same. Not only will this hardware produce more power, it’ll work far longer — with predictions of 30-year module warranties, roughly the projected lifetime of gas assets.
Oil and gas giants Shell and Total get serious about solar
Total acquired 50% of India’s Adani Group’s solar portfolio for $510m and Shell is building its first large-scale solar farm, a 120-MW effort in Australia.
New SunPower: Focusing on building the world’s highest efficiency PV modules at Maxeon Solar
In part 2 of our interview, the SunPower brain trust talks about scaling-up its high-efficiency PV technology in a way that it has not been able to do in the past — now that it has cash and a definitive focus.
Coronavirus could cause solar panel price spike
The coronavirus outbreak in China could raise solar module prices in the near term as manufacturers have already begun experiencing wafer and solar glass shortages. Production rates are also being affected by an extended new year holiday introduced by the authorities as a measure to deal with the virus, and the requirement workers from infected areas quarantine themselves for two weeks.
