Japan

The Japanese brand plans to shutter its Malaysian factory, liquidate its Panasonic Solar Energy Malaysia subsidiary, and lay off staff by March 2022.

Also in the brief: A surge of nuclear outages in the U.S. this summer, Japan’s struggle to drive down renewables costs

IEA PVPS report: Global solar demand increased by 12% in 2019 compared to 2018 — but that was BC. According to the report, photovoltaics provided just under 3% of global electricity needs in 2019.

“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.”

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.

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

The device has an area of 802cm² and thickness of 2mm. The manufacturer claims it improved module performance through an inkjet coating method and a reduction in weight by using thin glass substrates.

The Japanese electronics giant has unveiled three monocrystalline half-cut cell modules said to provide 2% to 3% better performance than standard, full-cell panels. The claimed efficiency of the modules exceeds 19.5% and Sharp says power output ranges from 330 W to 395 W.

Venture capital is still flowing to energy storage startups and the march to improve a wide variety of battery chemistries continues.

The latest edition of the World Nuclear Industry Status Report reiterates that clean power is taking the lead in the world’s energy system and nuclear is not only too costly a remedy for carbon emissions but too slow to deploy.