PV Tech Power Papers

The first full year of the Inflation Reduction Act in the US has seen a flurry of transactions completed as solar developers and now manufacturers take advantage. Jonathan Tourino Jacobo looks at some of the emerging trends and future prospects in this lucrative new market.

Policies in the EU and US to impose a carbon price on imported materials and goods will inevitably hit solar manufacturers. Corrine Lin and Sherry Hsu assess where these costs will land and how the industry should be adapting in preparation.

The EU and US are leading efforts to reduce the carbon intensity of PV manufacturing through targeted import tariffs. As well as supporting decarbonisation efforts, such policies could also promote geographic diversification in the solar supply chain and greater supply resilience, writes Michael Parr of the Ultra Low Carbon Solar Alliance.

The foundations of a solar project offer multiple opportunities for driving down system costs. Arash Yazdani of PRI Engineering describes some of the key steps involved in investigating the specific conditions of a project site and developing a foundation design that will stand the test of time.

Cost and risk factors can make countries facing energy access issues the most difficult for developers to build solar projects, despite their huge potential. Tom Kenning reports on two plug-and-play solutions that may provide a solution in off-grid locations.

Replacing outdated inverters can significantly boost the yield of a PV power plant and rectify equipment failures. Jörn Carstensen of Germany-based greentech looks at the technical, financial and logistical considerations involved in a successful inverter repowering project.

As a fast-growing segment of the industry, floating solar is also a novel technology that comes with a variety of new operational risks. Bobby McFadden, kWh Analytics, Chris Bartle of Ciel & Terre and James Markos of Willis Towers Watson explore some of these and their implications from an insurance perspective.

The dollar-per-watt metric has traditionally formed the basis of PV module purchasing. But as Anza CEO Mike Hall argues, this simplistic formula can lead to costly mistakes and stand in the way of getting the best value from procurement decisions.

Grid bottlenecks have emerged as a significant obstacle standing in the way of the energy transition in the United States, with gigawatts of projects sitting in interconnection queues. Michele Boyd, Will Gorman, and Diane Baldwin report on work taking place at the federal level to address the interconnection challenge.

In late 2023, researchers at Fraunhofer ISE put into operation the world’s first medium-voltage string inverter as part of a project to explore the power electronics for the next generation of large-scale PV power plants. According to the project’s leader, Michael Geiss, the signs are looking positive for the introduction of medium voltage in PV.