Germany

One of the pillars of Donald Trump’s election campaign was his pledge to protect the U.S. manufacturers from unfair competition. While it is still unclear whether he will follow through with his threats to increase import taxes on Chinese goods, SolarWorld took the opportunity of the historic meeting between President Trump and Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping to harangue China’s solar manufacturers and called for the issue of solar dumping to be raised.

The German/American PV maker has quarantined more than 60,000 PV modules in its inventory as well as recalling tens of thousands more, with a promise to replace the connectors.

The German PV module maker has confirmed its financial results for 2016. The company reiterated its outlook, which forecasts that it will become profitable again in 2019.

German technology group Heraeus and U.S. company Materion Advanced Materials have announced the completion of the latter’s acquisition of the target materials business belonging to Heraeus.

German solar research institute Fraunhofer ISE has reclaimed the multicrystalline PV cell efficiency record, achieving 21.9%. Fraunhofer researchers deployed n-type high-performance multicrystalline technology to produce the record-setting PV cell.

Interview: In December Energy Democracy, a book telling the story of Germany’s Energiewende from the perspective of citizen ownership of renewable energy, hit the shelves. The book is the latest collaboration of Political Scientist Arne Jungjohann and renewable energy writer Craig Morris, currently a senior fellow at the IASS in Potsdam, who worked together on the German Energy Transition website (energytransition.de). pv magazine caught up with Jungjohann to talk about the book, and why citizen involvement in energy is important.

Last year was a goody for German solar inverter manufacturer, by posting recording breaking sales figures alongside a rise in EBIT, however, the increase in price pressure in 2016 saw revenues fall, while this trend is expected to continue in 2017.

Storage specialist Eos Energy this week announced a partnership with Siemens to integrate, install and service large-scale energy storage solutions.

German renewable energy developer has acquired international PV power and storage specialist Belectric for a sum in the double-digit million dollar range, company comfirms.

Using 1366’s groundbreaking kerfless silicon wafers and Hanwha’s proprietary PERC cell process, the cells’ remarkable performance was verified by an independent testing firm.