Germany deployed around 411.9 MW of new PV capacity in October, according to the latest figures from federal network agency the Bundesnetzagentur. The country’s cumulative installed solar PV capacity has now reached 56.9 GW. This compares to 406.4 MW in September this year, and 421 MW in October 2020. In the first ten months of 2021, developers connected over 4.4 GW of solar to the grid, compared to 3.92 GW in the same period a year earlier. The country's cumulative solar capacity topped 56.9 GW at the end of September. The German PV market keeps being driven by the segments for installations not exceeding 750 kW in size, which last month achieved a newly-installed PV capacity of 304 MW. Of this capacity, around 292 MW comes from rooftop PV arrays while the remaining share is represented by small-sized solar parks. The Bundesnetzagentur also published new feed-in tariffs which will begin this month. The monthly decrease of solar subsidies remains at 1.4% while fixed feed-in tariffs for rooftop systems will range between €0.07693/kWh and €0.0527/kWh, depending on system size. Source from: https://www.pv-magazine.com/2021/11/30/germany-deployed-4-42-gw-of-pv-in-first-ten-months-of-2021/?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=linkedin

A ground-breaking political declaration among South Africa, France, Germany, the United Kingdom, the United States, and the EU, was made in the ongoing COP26 conference in Glasgow to support South Africa with an accelerated “just energy transition”. The declaration on this new ambitious, long-term Just Energy Transition Partnership will support South Africa’s decarbonization efforts by providing financial aid of USD 8.5 billion, with an aim to achieve the target presented in its updated Nationally Determined Contribution (NDC) emissions goals. The initial commitment of the amount can be available over the next 3-5 years through various mechanisms including multilateral and bilateral grants, concessional loans, investments, including mobilizing the private sector. On this occasion, President Cyril Ramaphosa said, “South Africa welcomes the commitment made in the Political Declaration to supporting the implementation of our revised Nationally Determined Contribution, which represents our country’s ambitious effort to support the global battle against climate change. “We look forward to a long-term partnership that can serve as an appropriate model of support for climate action from developed to developing countries, recognizing the importance of a just transition to a low carbon, climate-resilient society that promotes employment and livelihoods.” The partnership looks forward to preventing up to 1-1.5 gigatonnes of emissions over the next 20 years duration and assisting South Africa to move away from coal and accelerate its transition towards a clean, climate-resilient economy. The financial support will help it to accelerate investment in renewable energy and the development of new sectors like electric vehicles and green hydrogen, and ensure Eskom acquires funds to re-purpose its coal-fired power stations due to be decommissioned in the next 15 years. It is also required to use the fund to ensure communities dependent on coal mining or coal power stations for jobs have greener alternatives to make a living as part of that process. Source from: https://solarquarter.com/

Solar is now cheapest form of new electricity in a host of international markets, driven by cost reductions and growth of bifaciality, large-area solar modules and trackers. That is the conclusion of a new report released by analysts Wood Mackenzie, which also forecasts that the cost of solar PV could fall by a further 25% in the next decade. The report, dubbed ‘Total eclipse: How falling costs will secure solar’s dominance in power’, states solar to be the cheapest form of new power generation in markets including Spain, Italy, India and 16 US states. Over the course of the next decade, the list of countries where solar will become dominant will increase to include every US state, Canada, China and 14 other nations, the report claims. It points to the fact that the cost of solar has fallen by 90% over the last two decade and is forecast to fall by a further 15% – 25% by 2030. These cost reductions will occur at the same time several technologies – bifacial panels, large-area cells and modules and trackers – combine to boost the output of deployed solar across the globe. In addition to these technologies, advancements in operational technologies and automated processes will help reduce operational expenditure of new sites, further optimising solar’s cost benefit over other asset classes. WoodMac has also stressed that its outlook only factored in technologies that have been demonstrably commercialised and are being deployed today. Further innovations and technological breakthroughs in next-generation solar technologies could provide even further upside to its outlook. “As the world strives to recover from the economic slump caused by the COVID-19 pandemic and simultaneously meet the climate and environmental goals of the Paris Agreement, solar is uniquely placed to advance efforts towards a low-carbon, sustainable future,” Ravi Manghani, research director at WoodMac, said. The research house has, however, warned about the risk of solar becoming a victim of its own success. Price cannibalisation has long been a concern of solar developers and asset holders, and the report states falls in wholesale power prices – triggered by the influx of zero marginal cost renewables on national grids – could dent profitability. Furthermore, that risk could have a negative impact on investment appetite, which WoodMac regards as a potential limiting factor to solar’s rise, alongside electric transmission capacity and the development of battery technologies, the latter considered critical to facilitating greater proliferation of solar, as attested to by the fact numerous developers and utilities now hold battery storage pipelines. “Once a niche technology in the off-grid space, solar is now one of the cheapest, most efficient and easily deployable means of generating electricity,” Manghani added. WoodMac’s report follows a slew of other forecasts from industry analysts, all of which predict a staggering period of growth for solar PV over the coming years. Earlier t...

Indonesia is aiming to deploy an additional 4,680MW of solar by 2030 as part of efforts to reach net zero carbon emissions by 2060. Energy minister Arifin Tasrif said a new 2021-2030 master plan will see Indonesia source 51.6% of its added power capacity by the end of the decade from renewables, while the remainder will be new fossil fuel plants. Speaking during a virtual presentation today (Tuesday), Tasrif said the country’s projected annual increase in electricity demand over the next decade has been lowered to 4.9%, down from a previous estimate of 6.4%, due to the pandemic impacting economic growth. To reach the goals included in the master plan, the government expects independent power producers to play a larger role in the development of renewables projects over the coming years. Tasrif also said that the government will encourage the development of interconnection between Indonesia’s main islands to improve electricity reliability and increase renewables penetration. The strong potential for Indonesia’s solar sector was revealed in a report published in July by Wood Mackenzie, which suggested the country may become the fastest-growing PV market in the Asia Pacific region by end of the decade. Growing from a base of 300MW, the country’s solar capacity could reach 8.5GW by 2030, according to the research firm, which said the PV sector could be supported by a US$600 million loan from the Asian Development Bank to help Indonesia’s state-owned power company PLN expand electricity access and promote renewables in eastern Indonesia. PLN’s solar development efforts have already seen it form a joint venture with Masdar to construct a 145MWac floating solar project at a reservoir in West Java. The partners recently reached financial close for the Cirata plant, which is now under construction and due to begin commercial operation by the end of 2022. Singapore-based solar developer Sunseap Group also revealed plans to develop what it says will be the world’s largest floating solar project on Indonesia’s Batam Island. The 2.2GWp installation plant is slated for completion in 2024, when it will provide energy locally as well as potentially to Singapore via a subsea cable.

A Bangladeshi government minister has announced 40% of the nation's electricity will come from renewables by 2041. Junior power minister Nasrul Hamid made the declaration yesterday, at an inauguration ceremony for Bangladesh's largest solar rooftop, a $16 million, 16 MW array in Chittagong. The government in March said it would reformulate its renewables policy after it fell well short of a target to generate 10% of its electricity from clean power by last year. Around 3% of Bangladesh's power came from clean sources at that point. “Renewable energy will be the main source of energy in the future,” the minister said on Sunday, emphasizing the benefits offered by commercial solar rooftops. “The share of renewable energy is increasing in [the] fuel mix,” said Hamid, in part thanks to the rising popularity of net-metered solar arrays like the one installed at an export processing zone owned by Korean clothing and textiles company Youngone Corporation. Export processing zones are areas with less onerous customs and tax charges where manufacturing takes place solely for export. The minister said plans to expand the Chittagong array to 40 MW next year would encourage other businesses to follow suit. The politician stressed, however, that the big land requirements of large scale, ground-mounted solar plants would mean wind, tidal and energy-from-waste facilities would also have big roles to play in reaching the government's 2041 target. Youngone Corporation intends to expand its Chittagong project to around 40 MW of generation capacity, with 4.3 MW due to come online before November and the balance expected next year. The intention is for all 34 factories at the Youngone export processing zone to be powered entirely by the eventual 40 MW of solar capacity. With the rooftop array net-metered, any excess power generated will be exported to the grid. Lee Jang-Keun, South Korean ambassador to Bangladesh, said of the rooftop array: “This is how businesses can get along with nature and reduce the threat of climate change.” Bangladesh has around 746 MW of renewable energy generation capacity and the first stage of the Chittagong array has taken the nation to 40.72 MW of net-metered rooftop solar.

Ground-mounted utility scale solar PV power systems continued to clearly dominate the solar space in 2019 – and this won’t change until 2024. The segment had a share of around 64% last year, which is anticipated to hike to 69% in 2021, and then remain flat at around 68% for the coming years. The slight ‘weakness‘ of utility-scale solar in 2019 is in direct relation to the market developments in China and India. Both world leading markets have been strongholds of ground-mounted PV power plants. While the termination of the feed-in tariffs for large-scale power plants in May 2018 in China resulted in immediate market contraction, it also directly had a positive impact on rooftop PV. This development continued in 2019 when solar demand in China fell even steeper. Still, close to 60% of the solar capacity added in China last year were utility-scale power plants. The other leading market that disappointed last year was India, where the bulk of the total installed capacity are ground-mounted power plants. Less PV demand in India meant less utility-scale power plants for the world. On the other hand, the United States, as the world’s No. 2 PV market, saw increasing demand in 2019, mostly driven by a year-end deadline for the 30% ITC, which primarily triggered investments in utility-scale PV capacities. However, deploying large volumes of utility-scale solar is much simpler to deploy than creating a distributed PV rooftop market, which requires a substantial period of time and a lot of effort to educate consumers, while setting up an effective platform with the right financing instruments and technical standards. That’s why emerging markets usually begin their solar chapter with tenders for utility-scale solar and frequently struggle to set up the distributed rooftop segment, even if politicians generally prefer PV on roofs which they consider the natural place for the technology as it avoids any potential conflicts on land use. A good example for such a development is India, which targets 100 GW of solar by 2022, with 40 GW coming from rooftop solar. But of the 35.7 GWAC total of solar power capacity installed by the end of 2019, only 4.4 GWAC were rooftop systems—the vast majority (88%) was utility-scale PV power plants. The Indian Government had approved 1.7 billion USD under its Sustainable Rooftop Implementation for Solar Transfiguration of India (SRISTI) programme in 2018 to accelerate the installation of rooftop solar. Instead, an economic slowdown had pulled that rooftop solar down, resulting in the first decline for the small segment in five years in India. Two relatively recent solar feed-in tariff hot-spots and new GW-scale markets, Vietnam and Ukraine, have been also focusing on utility-scale solar, whereas the European country’s net metering programme has been nurturing a small rooftop market as well. However, even the most advanced solar rooftop market, Australia, with more than 2.3 million solar homes, has recently been leaning towards uti...