Solar energy news

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Solar stocks are on the move after Trina Solar (TSL +3.7%) CEO Gao Jifan says its factories are operating at full capacity but the company still can't meet the demand for its solar panels.China's top three solar panel makers are at full capacity and will have to expand their production, Gao says, noting that TSL's solar panel production will rise to 3.8 GW by year-end, up from ~3.4 GW at the end of June.

Solar stocks sizzle after Trina says it can't keep up with demand - Trina Solar Limited (NYSE:TSL) | Seeking Alpha

advances made in photovoltaic (PV) cells, combined with an explosion in solar panel manufacturing in China, helped send solar prices down far faster than fossil fuels. The average solar panel now costs around 75% less than it did just five years ago and…the more solar that is put in, the faster prices drop. Citibank estimates that the price of an average solar panel falls by 30% whenever installed solar capacity doubles in a given area…[B]y 2020, they believe solar will be…successfully competing with fossil fuels on an unsubsidized basis…

NewEnergyNews: QUICK NEWS, Sept. 15: SOLAR SUCCEEDING ON PRICE; EVEN MORE WIND THAT HONDA EXPECTED; THE HUGE UNRECOGNIZED BENEFITS OF EFFICIENCY

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Lazard’s research shows that the average cost of biomass, geothermal, onshore wind and utility-scale solar all compete with -- or even beat -- natural-gas peaking plants, natural-gas combined cycle plants, coal plants and nuclear plants. Energy efficiency, by far the lowest-cost resource, beats everything handily.

New Cost Analysis Shows Unsubsidized Renewables Increasingly Rival Fossil Fuels : Greentech Media

REmap 2030, a global roadmap developed by the International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA), shows that not only can renewable energy meet the world’s rising demand, but it can do so more cheaply, while contributing to limiting global warming to under 2 degrees Celsius – the widely cited tipping point for climate change.

NewEnergyNews: TODAY’S STUDY: NEW ENERGY TO BE THE WORLD’S BIGGEST AND BEST ENERGY BY 2030

At an event hosted in New York this week by Solar City, CEO Lyndon Rive and chairman Elon Musk announced that within five to 10 years every set of solar panels that Solar City installs will come with a battery pack to help deal with the intermittency of solar power—one of the key factors limiting its use.

Solar City and Tesla Combine Manufacturing Plans | MIT Technology Review

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Scientists at Western University have discovered that a small molecule created with just 144 atoms of gold can increase solar cell performance by more than 10 per cent. These findings, published recently by the high-impact journal Nanoscale, represent a game-changing innovation that holds the potential to take solar power mainstream and dramatically decrease the world's dependence on traditional, resource-based sources of energy, says Giovanni Fanchini from Western's Faculty of Science.

Scientists revolutionize solar power with new "gold nanocluster" technology

Reportedly, a lack of distributed generation installation this year is what prompted the increased interest at a policy level. Only 188 MW of the full target of 8 GW for the year had been installed by Spring. So the government wants solar developers to start building immediately, and apply for quotas afterwards. The point is to focus on construction or installation activity, not on paper work or other administrative details.

National Energy Agency of China Wants More Solar

A new, highly efficient process for splitting water into hydrogen and oxygen has been demonstrated by researchers in Switzerland. The process combines a stable catalyst with a highly efficient perovskite solar cell. The perovskite solar cells do have a major drawback in that they breakdown after a few hours, but the researchers believe further advances in solar cell technology should take care of this problem.

Perovskite solar cells show hydrogen production promise | Chemistry World

As a case in point, SolarCity's installation costs have dropped nearly 30% in two years. And the company expects more savings to come. SunPower , which installs rooftop solar but works more at the utility level, noted that 2013 was the second consecutive year that it was able to reduce its solar panel manufacturing costs by 20%. And, like SolarCity, SunPower expects costs to come down even further as it builds more up-to-date manufacturing facilities.

Not All Solar Power Is Created Equal - NASDAQ.com

The average utility-scale solar bid through Georgia Power’s solicitation came in at 6.5 cents per kilowatt-hour.

Georgia Is the Latest State to Procure Dirt-Cheap Solar Power : Greentech Media

Renewable energy is now producing about 30 percent of all of Germany’s electricity needs. On some days, solar power provides half of the total grid demand, which is particularly remarkable considering that Germany only started installing solar about a decade ago. Total installed solar capacity now exceeds 38 gigawatts. Installed wind power is more than 35 gigawatts, and biomass power still produces almost twice as much power than solar in Germany, even though we hear far less about this third major renewable, which is also baseload power.

Is Germany Abandoning Its Commitment to the Energy Transition? : Greentech Media

A new report from GTM Research reveals the potential for a polysilicon oversupply to resurface in 2016.

Polysilicon Capacity Growth to Accelerate, Enabling 85GW of Solar Panel Production in 2016 : Greentech Media

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Back in 2013, Greentech Media came up with the term “grid edge” to encompass the new world of rooftop solar PV, behind-the-meter batteries, energy-smart buildings and other distributed, customer-owned energy assets. We also predicted that utilities and governments would need to take on these non-traditional challenges sooner rather than later, if they wanted to convert them from existential threat into future opportunity. One year later, and we’ve seen this forecast hold true -- and at a scale that we wouldn’t have begun to predict. Here’s our list of the five most important stories happening on the grid edge in 2014.

This Year’s Key Developments in Distributed Energy and Utility Disruption : Greentech Media

Quarterly solar photovoltaic (PV) demand in the Asia-Pacific (APAC) region is forecast to reach the 10 gigawatt (GW) level for the first time in Q4’14. According to the latest Solarbuzz Asia Pacific Major PV Markets Quarterly report, annual APAC PV demand in 2014 is forecast to grow 19% Y/Y, driven mainly by a year-end installation rush in China, as well as strong growth in Japan.

Year-End Rush in China Leads Asia-Pacific Solar PV Market to Set New Record in Q4’14, According to Solarbuzz | SolarbuzzPhotovoltaic industry report december 2014_finished_version_13.pdf - Google Drive

The United Nations climate negotiations that concluded over the weekend in Lima, Peru, included an agreement among 190 nations—rich and poor—to develop action plans over the next several months outlining how they will work to avert climate change. It is the first time so many nations have agreed to make such commitments. This means more nations are likely to draft plans that embrace clean-tech innovation and renewable energy in advance of a hoped-for climate agreement in Paris next year, policy experts say.

Global Climate Action Plans May Offer a Boost for Renewables | MIT Technology Review

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After spending almost $30 billion on solar energy in a single year and installing as many panels as exist in the whole of Spain, Japan is preparing to ratchet back its boom in photovoltaic power.

Solar’s $30 Billion Splurge Proves Too Much for Japan - Bloomberg

According to METI, developers installed nearly 10 gigawatts of renewable generating capacity through the end of April 2014, including 9.6 gigawatts of photovoltaics. (The nuclear reactors at Fukushima Daiichi had 4.7 gigawatts of capacity; overall, the country has around 290 gigawatts of installed electricity-generating capacity.) Three-quarters of the new solar capacity was in large-scale installations such as Mitsui’s.

Post-Fukushima, Japan Looks for a Solar Renewal | MIT Technology Review

Speed of PV's expansion placing strain on grid's capacity to absorb solar-powered electricity, prompting five utilities to restrict grid access of new solar farms.

Grid restrictions could slow Japan's solar revolution: pv-magazine

Tokyo Electric Power Co. is building a 100-kilometer-long electricity transmission line in central Japan as part of the country's efforts to upgrade its grid infrastructure in view of surging renewable power.

Tokyo Electric upgrading grid with 100-km-long transmission line : pv-magazine

An investigation has been launched by Japan's Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry (METI) into why only one-in-ten approved PV projects in Japan has been built. Possible sanctions for deliberate delays could include withdrawal of FIT certification.

Unbuilt PV projects in Japan could have FIT certification withdrawn: pv-magazine

The newly installed utility-scale solar capacity around the world has surpassed 10,000 MW so far in 2014, marking the fifth consecutive record year, according to provisional figures published on Monday by Wiki-Solar. This trend will continue in 2015 as well, thanks to further progress in the US, China and India as well as solar capacity growth in Chile, Japan and South Africa

World installs over 10 GW of large solar capacity in 2014 - SeeNews Renewables

Yet, with curtailment at 40% on avg., and 80%-90% in some cases in China (curtailment is utilities refusal to buy a portion of the power produced by solar plants, thus limiting the transmission of “hard cash” to the project owners who are the counterparties to the ballooning accounts receivables/inventories on the balance sheets of the Chinese PV cell/module vendors), we see the ability of customers to pay back Chinese PV cell/module vendors when their receivables are due as extremely limited.

China Solar: Polysilicon Prices To Sharply Correct Lower, Says Axiom - Asia Stocks to Watch - Barrons.com

The worldwide solar market demand in 2014 was approximately at 44GW, even though the China market did not perform as well as expectations, due to the continuous growth in Japan and the U.S. market, the supply and demand remained stable.

TrendForce: 2015 Worldwide Solar Demand to Grow 16.5%, Emerging Markets Growth to Surpass 40%

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Skittish investors who have difficulty discerning the differences between oil markets and electricity markets may be dumping solar stocks. But those looking for stable returns through project-level investments certainly haven't backed away from the sector.  That was evident in new numbers from Bloomberg New Energy Finance (BNEF) showing that solar accounted for nearly half of all global clean energy investments in 2014.

Solar Accounted for Nearly Half of Global Clean Energy Investment in 2014 : Greentech Media

The International Energy Agency (IEA) estimates that $1 trillion a year will need to pour into non-fossil energy in order to stabilize global temperatures. However, in 2012 and 2013, investments in renewables through projects, venture capital and public equity dipped, seemingly reversing years of positive momentum toward that goal. The drop was actually rooted in a positive trend. It was mostly influenced by the declining cost of photovoltaics and wind equipment, not investor flight. It is now 40 percent less costly to install solar globally compared with 2012, according to IEA.

Solar Accounted for Nearly Half of Global Clean Energy Investment in 2014 : Greentech Media

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Between November 2013 and November 2014, solar employment increased by nearly 22 percent, almost twenty times faster than employment in the overall economy, according to the jobs census. Over the last five years, solar industry employment has grown by 86 percent, amounting to about 80,000 new jobs.

Solar Is Adding Jobs 20 Times Faster Than the Broader Economy, but ‘All Bets Are Off’ in 2017 : Greentech Media

When Buonassisi set up his research group at MIT, many analysts doubted that photovoltaics could ever compete with fossil-fuel-based power plants. “In 2007, that was the majority belief,” he says. But since then, he says, prices have dropped about 80 percent for standard silicon solar cells; last year, new solar power-generating capacity in the United States exceeded new natural gas-generating capacity.

Solar Technology and Cost Reduction and Market Competitiveness | The Energy Collective

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Antoine Paquin, CEO of Ontario, Canada- and Silicon Valley-based Solantro Semiconductor, believes Moore's law can lower the cost of solar power electronics. (Yes, Moore's law is not a law; it's more of an observation. And the original idea applied to transistor density growth over time. We'll use it as shorthand for the way silicon drives computing power, as well as cost and size reduction.)

Can Moore’s Law Be Applied to Power Electronics for Solar and Storage? : Greentech Media

In twenty of the 50 cities, customers paying upfront with cash for a 5-kilowatt system will see greater returns than on the stock market over the 25-year life of the system. In 46 of the 50 cities, customers with a fully financed solar project will see better performance than the stock market. Financing over time benefits more people in all cities. San Jose ($23,171), San Francisco ($21,859) and Oakland ($21,839) came out on top.

Report: Solar Is Cheaper Than the Grid in 42 of the 50 Largest US Cities : Greentech Media

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It’s been one of the big themes at the World Energy Future Conference here in Abu Dhabi. Solar, and other technologies such as wind power, are no longer more expensive than traditional fossil fuels in many parts of the world. Indeed, they are cheaper. The big oil and gas players recognise this. Dr Adaba Sultan Ahmed al Jabber, the minister of state of the United Arab Emirates, said at the lavish opening on Monday that the cost of solar was competing with traditional sources of energy, and would not be derailed by the plunge in the oil price. He saw that as an opportunity to call for the removal of fossil fuel subsidies, which he noted outstripped those of renewables by a factor of 5:1 in 2013.

Why solar costs will fall another 40% in just two years : Renew Economy

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The surface nanotexture helps cut down on reflection of many wavelengths of light simultaneously. The method, which is described in the journal Nature Communications and submitted for patent protection, has potential for streamlining silicon solar cell production and reducing manufacturing costs. The approach may find additional applications in reducing glare from windows, providing radar camouflage for military equipment, and increasing the brightness of light-emitting diodes.

Antireflective nanotextures create self-assembly surface for solar cells - Electronics Eetimes

The energy giant announced plans to spin off its nuclear, oil, coal and gas operations - a move that will include selling its businesses in Spain and Portugal to Australian investment firm Macquarie for 2.5 billion euros ($ 3.11 billion).

German energy giant E.ON to focus on renewables | News | DW.DE | 01.12.2014

One of the biggest solar power stories of the past year — if not the biggest — was the record-low price of solar power that was bid in Dubai toward the end of the year. ACWA Power bid 5.98 cents per kWh, well below the cost of natural gas in the region (which is 9 cents per kWh).

Cheapest Solar In The World (Michael Liebreich Interview)