World

The agreement removes a key hurdle to the carving up of SunEdison’s empire.

According to the latest U.S. Energy Storage Monitor, a quarterly publication from GTM Research and the Energy Storage Association (ESA), the United States deployed 41.2 megawatts of energy storage in the second quarter of 2016, an increase of 126% over the first quarter of the year. The nation is on track to deploy 287 megawatts of energy storage this year.

Changing technology, pressure to cut costs, dizzying price slumps and a number of other issues make solar module quality control as relevant as ever. The danger that modules could fail outright remains slim, so module reliability is still decisive for the success of the investment, explains George Touloupas, Director of Technology and Quality at CEA, in preparation of the 4th pv magazine Quality roundtable at SPI.

NEC Energy Solutions has launched the DSS distributed energy storage platform to enter the commercial and industrial (C&I) energy storage segment, offering customers distributed energy management services and a future option of utility services through aggregation.

Increased renewable energy output, including solar, cut in-state thermal generation 20% during the summer of 2016.

The world’s largest emitters have committed to the global agreement, but the voluntary nature of individual national plans leaves many doubts.

Quality roundtable preparation: A case of compromised quality. An operator claims nearly 17% of the modules in his array displayed significant damage after three years. The EPC company concealed the damage from the investor until the warranty had expired. The module manufacturer responded slowly and only out of goodwill.

The U.S. Agency for International development (USAID) announced that it will provide USD10 million in funding to a number of projects aimed at addressing critical areas of development, two of the projects center on solar research in India and in Morocco.

Some PV panels or batches of modules are susceptible to potential induced degradation (PID), while others are scarcely affected. Currently, many PV farm operators in Europe are experiencing this reality. The third instalment of our “Bring on the Black Sheep” series describes a case in which a module manufacturer behaved in a close to exemplary manner, but the inverter manufacturer made life difficult.

The SunEdison roadshow continues as GCL-Poly move in and TerraForm Power holds on to staff, while the SolarCity-Tesla merger trundles onwards despite a few unexpected bumps in the road.