Solar Power

XINING, Oct. 5 (Xinhua) — Every morning, Suo Qiyuan, a herder in northwest China’s Qinghai Province, takes more than 300 sheep to graze inside a solar power station.

Located in a green industrial park in the Hainan Tibetan Autonomous Prefecture, the station was built in 2013 and designed to capitalize on the region’s rich solar energy resources at an altitude of approximately 3,000 meters.

Over the years, it has become more than a supplier of clean power. It has also been an unexpected gift for local herders.

Suo, 40, used to lead a nomadic life. For more than 20 years, he moved his camp across the endless pasture, following his grass-seeking herd all year round.

He said that in 2018, a grazing ban began to take effect in the area to aid ecological protection efforts, and it affected Suo’s life.

　The local government soon took notice of Suo’s predicament and invited him to graze his sheep in a solar power station belonging to the Qinghai branch of China Huaneng Group Co., Ltd.

Suo was puzzled at first, as the power station is located in an area that has long been impacted by desertification. “How can I herd sheep where there is no grass?”

The day after he visited the station, he moved his tent and sheep pen without hesitation.

The broad photovoltaic panels inside the power station, 1.5 meters above and parallel to the ground, allow sufficient space for vegetation growth and reduce evaporation from the land surface, according to Liu Guang, an official with the industrial park’s administration.

At the same time, the regular cleaning of the panels provides extra water for the soil to absorb, eventually turning wasteland into grassland.

Monitoring data has shown that wind speeds in the park have decreased by 50 percent and soil water evaporation has decreased by 30 percent, while vegetation coverage has recovered to 80 percent.

As the grass grows taller, however, it can block the panels from the sun and pose a fire hazard in the winter. Weeding also increases company budgets.

These factors mean sheep and other livestock are welcome in the industrial park, which is now home to some 90 solar power plants.

According to Huaneng Group staffer Ma Fengjia, the station has created a win-win solution for the local economy and environmental conservation efforts, providing more possibilities for the development of the clean energy industry.

With the park’s existing installed new energy capacity, it can save 7.37 million tonnes of standard coal and reduce emissions of 22.37 million tonnes of carbon dioxide each year, Liu said, adding that hundreds of local herders now graze their animals in power stations.

China has pledged to peak carbon dioxide emissions by 2030 and achieve carbon neutrality by 2060. Green development now has deep roots in the vast highland region of northwestern China, where the utilization of rich solar, wind and other resources has been increased.

Suo is quite satisfied with the new pasture, saying the grass under the photovoltaic panels is “of high nutritional value” for his sheep. More importantly, he can now spend more time with his family as the power station is just 4 kilometers from his home. He said he never wants to relive the lonely nights listening to the howls of wolves, or the freezing days that cracked his skin.

“I don’t need to wander around in the wild anymore. That kind of life has gone forever,” Suo said.

New York is primed to soak up the sun, but the city’s ability to hit its solar-power targets could be in jeopardy.

Tens of millions of dollars in incentives from the state that helps make city-friendly “community solar” developments economically feasible are about a month away from sunsetting for new projects. And that’s threatening clean energy projects on tap for the city — along with the local jobs and energy savings that come with them, solar industry reps say.

The solar industry contends that Gov. Kathy Hochul’s recently expanded solar development goals — from six gigawatts by 2025 to 10 by 2030, enough to power almost 1.7 million homes — won’t necessarily help the five boroughs unless the credit gets replenished.

With community solar, tenants purchase sun-generated power that’s not necessarily collected where they live, since they have no say on whether to put panels on their apartment buildings. Energy experts see community solar as a way for lower-income New Yorkers, who can’t afford the high up-front costs of installation, to participate in the clean energy transition.

Gov. Kathy Hochul’s office

Community solar is particularly well-suited for the city, where two-thirds of residents are renters. Density and strict fire codes mean space is scarce for everything from rooftop solar panels to large, utility-scale clear energy projects.

Meanwhile, community solar is growing — such projects represented 75% of applications for non-residential solar undertakings in 2020, according to the city.

“Community solar is really starting to get off the ground, and there’s a lot of room for growth,” said Susanne DesRoches, deputy director for infrastructure and energy in the Mayor’s Office of Sustainability and Office of Resiliency.

“We feel like we’re right at the beginning of something that could be expanded and multiplied throughout the city,” she added. “We just have to have the right programs and the right incentives in place in order to be able to do that.”

‘Important Incentive Mechanism’

In April 2019, the state Public Service Commission authorized the community credit, which provides a subsidy for energy generated from community solar projects in Con Ed’s territory, which includes New York City and Westchester.

The program covers 350 megawatts of community solar projects in total — coming to about $68 million annually, according to the state Department of Public Service. The projects can collect the credit for 25 years.

Con Ed estimates that about 9,000 customers receive 28 megawatts of power from 250 community solar installations in its service area, and more are coming online.

But there are just five megawatts’ worth of the community credit left for new solar projects to reserve — enough to support projects for only about another month, according to an estimate by Shyam Mehta, the outgoing executive director of New York Solar Energy Industries Association.

He called the credit the “most important incentive mechanism” for fostering community solar in the city, where residents have access to about a tenth of the sun-powered community projects of the rest of the state.

Hiram Alejandro Durán/THE CITY

“Pretty much developers have stopped developing new community solar projects in New York City because they don’t know whether there is going to be any future incentive support,” Mehta said. “Without that incentive support, the economics of community solar just don’t pencil out right now in New York City.”

Without the credit, the value of solar will be cut in half, developers warn. They say it’s already hard to develop solar in the boroughs: Unlike sprawling areas upstate, the city’s solar projects tend to be smaller and more expensive, given the price of labor and trucking equipment into the city. Costs to get customers on board are high.

Part of why the credit is nearly spent is because nearly 170 megawatts’ worth went to gas-powered fuel cell projects, such as a 12-megawatt project by Daroga Power that encompasses 48 fuel cells around New York City. In mid 2019, the PSC prevented any more fuel cell projects from benefiting from the community credit to ensure the incentive went to solar projects.

‘Projects Are Worthless’

The Mayor’s Office of Sustainability, Office of Resiliency, NYCHA and the city Economic Development Corporation petitioned the Public Service Commission early this year to replenish the incentive to make up for the amount allocated to fuel cell projects, and plan for a successor program.

The PSC does not appear to be answering the call, at least not yet: spokesperson James Denn said a report about the future of solar will address “issues related to the New York City allocations.”It will be released for public comment early next year.

Until then, the local solar industry remains in limbo.

“Either we extend a successful program and make sure we’re supporting that segment, which is so critical to achieving our equity goals and our clean energy policies, or we don’t, and we sort of suffer the consequences,” said Noah Ginsburg, a director at the environmental nonprofit Solar One, which helps facilitate solar developments in underserved communities and offers job training.

New York City is aiming to install enough solar panels on public properties to generate 100 megawatts of energy by 2025. So far, the city has put in just 14 megawatts’ worth of panels, according to the mayor’s management report.

Solar panels on private properties in the city can generate 285 megawatts of solar so far — which will help the city achieve its overall goal of 1,000 megawatts by 2030.

“You’re not going to be able to hit these goals without these kinds of incentives, particularly in places like New York City, where development is incredibly expensive and complex,” said Matt Russotti, president of the development company Sol Purpose. “Nowadays, the projects are worthless.”

Courtesy of NYCHA

NYCHA offers its roofs for community solar developments, but the program is at risk without the state credit.

“The community credit is overall an important part of ensuring NYCHA can meet its goal to install 30 megawatts of community shared solar on its buildings,” said Rochel Leah​ Goldblatt, a spokesperson. NYCHA is about a tenth of the way to that goal.

‘An Incredibly Hard Task’

Sol Purpose developed the recently completed project at the Queensbridge Houses. At 1.8 megawatts and spanning over 27 buildings, it’s the largest community solar project atop public housing in the country. The company says it hired 13 formerly unemployed NYCHA residents to work on the project, five of whom live at Queensbridge.

Sol Purpose also pays the city to lease the roof space, and the revenue — millions of dollars over 25 years, Russotti said — goes toward improving the buildings.

Russotti’s firm was in the process of developing two more megawatts of community solar with NYCHA, but the company had to rework the development timeline: cutting corners and spending more money to lock in the credit before it ran out.

The uncertainty about the credit is causing a chilling effect for developers like Russotti, who say they are reluctant to put resources into new projects.

Con Ed data of applications for community solar projects through August doesn’t show a slow-down yet. Shyam said the numbers likely reflect the rush to grab what’s left of the credit, and he expects to see plummeting rates in the coming months.

Brock Gibian, director of development at Brooklyn-based Ecogy Energy, said every day his company is turning down would-be customers and won’t take on new projects in New York City unless the community credit is extended. One community solar project at risk is planned for the roof of the St. Charles School on Staten Island. The leasing revenue from the project would help fund a new roof, Gibian said.

“If anyone thinks that Con Ed is going to be able to decarbonize, just talk to a developer like me trying to build a solar project in Westchester or the boroughs,” Gibian said. “It’s an incredibly hard task to achieve, and that’s with the current economics of the community credit. If the community credit goes away, we simply cannot make a single project work.”

‘Profound’ Possibilities

Industry experts and Con Ed have warned that the scarcity of space limits New York City’s overall capacity for solar — with or without state subsidies.

The state legislature this summer passed a bill that would allow cross-utility crediting, so that customers of one utility may subscribe to a community solar project in another utility’s territory.

The bill, which awaits Hochul’s signature, would require some technical coordination to make it work on the backend. But the New York Solar Energy Industries Association estimates it would allow about half a million more people to access community solar.

Jamie McShane, a Con Ed spokesperson, noted the utility’s support for the state’s plans for offshore wind plans, energy storage and transmission lines that bring clean power from places as far as upstate and Canada down to the city.

But while transmission lines — like the two Hochul is supporting — can transport solar power into the city, the boroughs won’t reap ancillary benefits like jobs without local investments in harnessing the sun’s energy.

“There are so many barriers to doing solar in New York City but the benefits are off the chart,” said Stephen Roundtree, northeast director of advocacy organization Vote Solar. “It’s the most efficient way of making electricity in New York City.”

In addition to the health outcomes that result from avoiding breathing toxins that spew from gas-fired plants, customers can save about 10% on their energy bills.

In-city solar can provide jobs for people, too. NYCHA’s program has trained about 45 people, with 25 of those hired to work on projects on public housing properties and 10 staying on with installers permanently.

“That can really change people’s economic situation in a more profound way than it does elsewhere,” Roundtree said.

‘An Equitable Market’

In Sunset Park, 150 customers will see a 15% discount on their electricity bills next year when a community solar project developed by UPROSE, Solar One, Co-op Power, 770 Electric Corp., and Resonant Energy atop the Brooklyn Army Terminal goes online.

At 685 kilowatts, the development’s capacity is more than three times as large as the median community solar project. The installer, 770 Electric, has said it will hire at least six community members to work on the project.

The developers secured the community credit as part of the financing, which is part of what made the project possible, said Summer Sandoval, UPROSE’s energy democracy coordinator.

“We don’t want Big Oil to become Big Renewable Energy,” Sandoval said. “We have to create an equitable market for local energy that is going to be centered on, how do we move both public and private investment and resources to frontline community projects?”

The question is key as the state moves to decarbonize its electric sector by 2040, ensuring that disadvantaged communities receive 35% of benefits, as the state’s emissions slashing law, the Climate Leadership and Community Protection Act, mandates.

Dive Brief:

• SB Energy, a subsidiary of Japanese conglomerate SoftBank Group, reached an agreement to purchase 2 GWh of iron flow energy storage from Oregon-based ESS — a major deal for the emerging technology.
• In the deal, SB Energy will deploy iron flow battery systems to complement solar power projects in Texas and California through 2026. The first system has already been delivered to a solar generation site in Davis, Calif. and will be installed this month.
• ESS produces flow batteries of various sizes built with only iron, salt and water that can provide up to 12 hours of output. The company has also developed a large-scale battery system starting at 3 MW with durations of between 6 and 16 hours for power providers and large manufacturers.

Dive Insight:

The deal is a significant volume for the flow battery technology. The vast majority of battery storage on the market — 85% of newly installed storage around the world, according to a 2020 report from Navigant Research — is based on lithium-ion technology. While that technology is relatively cheap and well-tested, the batteries do carry concerns about their fire risk, their slow charging time and the supply chain impact of extracting minerals.

ESS’ flow batteries, on the other hand, rely on common materials and don’t carry the same safety risks. The five-year partnership with SB Energy acts as a major vote of confidence for the technology, said ESS CEO Eric Dresselhuys. 

“This deal is really the culmination of years of work to show that there’s a better mousetrap out there that solves more problems and is better for where the grid is going,” Dresselhuys said. “Once people see that we’ve been vetted and tested and approved by partners like SB, that provides a lot of confidence.”

ESS went public this spring through a special purpose acquisition company, part of a push to expand manufacturing to systems that can produce 16 GWh a year across three continents. 

The company also announced in September that it would sell 17 ESS Energy Warehouse battery systems with a combined capacity of 8.5 MWh to Enel Green Power España to support a solar farm in Spain. 

A June 2021 study from Global Industry Analysts projected that the worldwide market for flow batteries would grow from an estimated $290.5 million in 2020 to $962 million by 2026, with particular growth in the utility and industrial space because of the long-duration potential of flow batteries. Massachusetts-based startup Form Energy announced in July that it was working on an iron-air-exchange battery capable of delivering up to 100 hours of electricity at a price of less than $20/kWh, which analysts say could revolutionize the storage industry. 

SB Energy, headquartered in the Bay Area, develops utility-scale renewable energy deployments in the U.S. The company has five solar projects in operation or under construction in Texas and California that total 1.7 GW. The company also says it is working on a “multi-gigawatt pipeline” of solar and storage projects in the next five years. The company had previously invested $110 million in Energy Vault, an alternative storage firm that relies on gravity to store and deliver energy. 

Dresselhuys said SB Energy’s commitment to “looking ahead at trends in renewable energy” made them a valuable partner, especially on a multi-year deal that can add security to the marketplace.

“A lot of long-duration storage has come along, but not all of these companies have achieved scale in the marketplace,” Dresselhuys said. “The sheer scale of this deal, along with Enel, can shift people‘s minds about what’s possible for storage and renewable energy.”

Two 200m (656ft) chimney stacks and a boiler house were demolished at Ferrybridge Coal Power Station in West Yorkshire in August 2021. 

Image: David Autumns / Alamy Stock PhotoIncongruous on the worn stone of a heritage-listed church in Camden, London, solar panels flash, attempt discretion under diffused English sunlight. Nearby, long black sheets catch the sun atop a National Health Practice’s modern brick and glass structure.

Despite high solar energy potential, and incentives from the Maharashtra State Government and power companies for its use and buy-back, renewables currently account for just 5 percent, barely denting the predominance of coal. MCAP does not specify any particular action to phase out coal.

“No mission can be successful without people’s participation.” the self-reliant India policy headlined. People, including environmentalists, youth groups, tribal dwellers and politicians across party lines all participated to protest against coal extraction from forests.

Maharashtra Environment Minister Thackeray opposed the Centre’s plan to mine in the vicinity of the Tadoba-Andhari Tiger Reserve in Maharashtra. When the project was dropped, he tweeted, “This is welcome news.”

Solar cell panels for solar energy are being installed on the terrace of an office building near Marine Drive in Mumbai 

Image: Shutterstock 

In their concern for the future of our earth and life as we know it, individuals and community groups not only align with CoP26 goals, augment the grid and provide clean energy locally, but they also create awareness, give people a sense of control and motivate others in their circles to do the same.

Like India, the UK is also experimenting with diverse models of solar and other clean energy production and delivery including institutional, participatory and community models.

Two years before Mumbai’s MCAP, alongside 27 of 33 London boroughs, Islington and Camden Councils declared a state of climate emergency in 2019. To deliver on their commitment to build clean, affordable energy systems that leave none of their residents behind, partnerships with community groups, including PUNL, add much-needed momentum.

The thrust of most institutional and community renewable models is to meet the requirements of fixed infrastructure. However, demanding immediate attention from governments and communities is transport, another crucial sector with its own steeply escalating need for power, all set to overtake the pre-existing demands of fixed infrastructure.

EVs align with another important goal of CoP26, to “speed up the switch to electric vehicles”. India’s national policies aim to replace 30 percent of vehicles with EVs by 2030, and MCAP names EVs as key for greenhouse gas reduction.

Sara de la Serna, who worked for Element Energy, UK, explains that barriers to EVs include cost and charging infrastructure. “The switch from traditional fossil fuel driven vehicles to EVs requires significant market, consumer perception, infrastructure and behavioural changes to be successful,” she says.

Like the UK, EV manufacture in India will also face daunting challenges, and require significant behavioural change and financial investment in infrastructure and manufacturing technologies, including EV-friendly road design, power outlets and incentives to car manufacturers. Together, these represent a significant share of India’s Budget.

Side-by-side investments in EVs and solar power will demonstrate India’s success or failure in achieving their stated aim of lower emissions alongside widespread EV use.

For most countries, action to meet the decision of CoP24 held in 2018 and annexed to the Agenda of CoP26 “to avert, minimize and address loss and damage and reduce disaster risks” is led by time-bound replacement of coal.

“It’s time for countries around the world to set out clear plans to consign coal power to the history books,” says Alok Sharma, surrounded by thick smoke as he watches the two chimneys in Yorkshire crumble and disintegrate, the trigger still in his hand.

The solar panels on the old Camden church shine bright. They highlight people’s aspirations away from the climate emergency initiated by coal. Across the UK, over 400 community energy groups deliver rooftop solar, LED lighting and retrofit solutions for community and residential buildings. In India, individuals and communities innovate new systems to deliver solar power.

MCAP addresses action points in all major sectors but it headlines the power sector, with 71 percent contribution, as most responsible for greenhouse gas emissions. It emphasises that Mumbai faces direct impacts of sea-level rise and would be underwater by 2050 without immediate and effective action. With the rest of India and the rest of the world, Maharashtra is already experiencing increasingly devastating climate events like droughts, cyclones and floods.

Inexplicably under the circumstances, Mumbai, which uses 2300MW, nearly half of Maharashtra’s power already, is escalating investments and infrastructure designed to increase private vehicles rather than investing in public transport. These investments will increase greenhouse gases from traditional vehicles and the EVs which are projected to replace them.

The World Habitat Day theme, with its theme ‘Accelerating urban action for a carbon-free world’ to “amplify the global Race to Zero Campaign”, encourages “local governments to develop actionable zero-carbon plans in the run up to the international climate change summit COP26 in November”.

Ahead of CoP26 and the Climate Week NYC 2021 Maharashtra Environment Minister Aaditya Thackeray reiterated his own stand, “We do not have the luxury of time. Maharashtra will set an example of how subnational governments can act on climate change despite being a massively industrialised state.”

Crossing the Thane Creek Bridge into Mumbai, tapered pylons reach for the sky, inter-connected to each other and to the city of Mumbai in vibrant lines alive with current. The power they supply is Mumbai’s life-blood, whose cleanliness Mumbai depends on absolutely for its health and wellbeing.

Mumbai’s uses half of Maharashtra’s power, and Maharashtra is India’s highest power consumer. By 2030, India will overtake the EU to become the world’s third largest power consumer.

The earth and all its inhabitants face existential threat, a climate emergency, not merely a climate inconvenience. As the fourth-largest greenhouse-gas emitter in the world already, India has potential to make or break the CoP26 aspiration of 1.5 degrees.

(Sumaira Abdulali is the convenor of Awaaz Foundation, Mumbai. Tanuja Pandit is the director of Power Up North London)​

What happened

Extending the 8% slide they suffered in August, shares of Enphase Energy (NASDAQ:ENPH) continued falling last month. The solar power and energy storage specialist dipped 14% in September, according to data from S&P Global Market Intelligence.

It wasn’t any specific news coming out of the company’s headquarters that inspired the stock’s sell-off last month. Instead, concerns about the global semiconductor shortage and its impact on the microinverter company seemed to trouble investors, motivating them to exit their positions.

Image source: Getty Images.

So what

The global semiconductor shortage is affecting numerous industries, and the solar industry is no exception. Investors are familiar with the impact on Enphase Energy as the company’s CEO, Badri Kothandaraman, addressed the issue on the company’s Q2 2021 conference call in July. Kothandaraman said that the company expected to add another semiconductor supplier in the third quarter to alleviate the supply crunch. The  concern is likely weighing heavily on investors’ minds. On the July call, for example, Kothandaraman said that although he expects to add the new supplier, “Still, the semi-supply chain is stressed, though, which is why I cannot meet all my demand.” With the company failing to make an announcement, however, investors, may have speculated that the company failed to add the new supplier. Additionally, they may be worried that the company will fail to achieve its Q3 guidance of $335 million to $355 million.

Investors’ concerns about a hit to the top line are not an overreaction. One of the company’s solar peers, SMA Solar Technology, announced in early September that it was downwardly revising its 2021 sales forecast due to “the undersupply of electronic components currently affecting the entire electronics industry.” Whereas the company had originally expected to book sales of $1.13 billion euros, it now forecasts revenue of 980 million euros to $1.03 billion euros. 

Now what

In contrast to the pessimism that Main Street showed toward Enphase Energy last month, Wall Street repeatedly expressed a positive outlook on the stock. Two weeks ago, Piper Sandler reiterated an overweight rating and $206 price target, according to Thefly.com, and a few days later, KeyBanc initiated coverage on the stock with an overweight rating and a $179 price target.

Enphase has emerged as a leader in microinverter solutions for the residential solar market, and its expansion into energy storage is another indicator that this stock demands serious attention from investors interested in renewable energy stocks. The semiconductor shortage may pressure the company in the short-term, but investors with a multi-year investing horizon will find that Enphase is a stock that is worth warming up to.

SOLAR Philippines has formed a new business called Solar Energy Zones, Inc. (SEZ) which seeks to develop areas conducive to hosting solar facilities for other power companies.

In an e-mailed statement over the weekend, the renewable energy (RE) firm said SEZ is in the process of finalizing agreements covering 10,000 hectares to develop solar energy zones, which will be mostly located near its existing power projects in Batangas, Tarlac, and Nueva Ecija.

SEZ will be separate from the group’s power plant business. It aims to address the scarcity of new sites for solar technologies amid increasing demand.

“Our aim is no longer to compete with the country’s power companies, but to enable them to build projects, to ensure that solar soon becomes the largest source of new energy in the Philippines,” said Solar Philippines Founder Leandro L. Leviste.

“Our solar energy zones will make it easy for any of these power companies that decide to build solar to locate in these zones and start construction that same year,” he added.

Solar Philippines said the solar energy zones are inspired by India’s solar parks where companies co-locate solar projects in sites with common facilities that benefit from economies of scale. This arrangement is said to help India lower the renewable energy technology’s barriers to entry.

In the coming months, Solar Philippines is set to announce projects from power firms which will be built in the said zones over the next five years. It claimed that the capacity of these will increase the share of solar in the country’s power generation mix.

Previously, the Energy department announced Solar Philippines Retail Electricity, Inc., a subsidiary of Solar Philippines, as the 14^th participant of the government’s green energy option program (GEOP).

GEOP allows consumers using at least 100 kilowatts of power to source RE from an accredited retail electricity supplier. — Angelica Y. Yang

The new approach can streamline inspections and keep solar panels operating efficiently.

Researchers have developed and demonstrated a new system that can detect defects in silicon solar panels under full and partial sunlight under all weather conditions. Current defect detection methods cannot be used in daytime conditions, so new systems can make it much easier to maintain optimal operation of solar panels.

Silicon solar panels, which make up about 90% of the world’s solar panels, often have defects that occur during manufacturing, handling, or installation. These defects can significantly reduce the efficiency of solar panels, so it is important to detect them quickly and easily.

Researchers used a very high frame rate InGaAs detector to capture a series of images of the solar panel when a modulated current was applied. The very fast imaging speed obtained from this detector allowed us to distinguish more changes between the images in the sequence. Credit: Nanjing University of Science and Technology Yunsheng Qian

Optica Publishing Group Journal Applied opticsResearchers at Nanjing University of Science and Technology in China explain that a unique combination of new hardware and software allows clear imaging and analysis of solar panel defects in bright light.

“Today’s defect detection systems can only be used to find defects in solar panel modules that have been removed and moved to a shaded environment at night,” said Yunsheng Qian, who led the research team. “We hope that this system will allow solar power plant inspectors to identify defects and identify them more quickly so that these systems can generate the highest levels of power. “

See through the light

In a new study, researchers have created an all-weather imaging system that works in all lighting conditions. To visualize defects, they have developed software that applies modulated current to solar panels. This causes the solar panel to emit light that turns on and off very quickly. A very high frame rate InGaAs detector is used to capture a series of images of a solar panel while passing current. Researchers also added a filter to limit the detected wavelengths to around 1150 nm to remove some of the stray light from the image.

Researchers have developed a new system that can detect defects in silicon solar panels under full and partial sunlight. Shown are images taken under low (left), medium (middle), and high (right) solar irradiances. The upper row (a, b, c) was obtained using a traditional system that does not work in sunlight, and the lower row (d, e, f) was obtained using a new system and defect display algorithm. Credit: Nanjing University of Science and Technology Yunsheng Qian

“The very fast imaging speed allows us to collect more images, so we can distinguish more changes between images,” said Sheng Wu, the lead author of this article. “A key development was a new algorithm that distinguishes between modulated and unmodulated parts of an image sequence and magnifies this difference. This allows for clear imaging of solar panel defects in high irradiance. I can do it.”

To test the system, researchers applied it to both single-crystal and polycrystalline silicon solar panels. The results show that the system can detect defects in silicon-based solar panels at irradiances of 0 to 1300 watts / square meter. This corresponds to light conditions ranging from full darkness to full sunlight.

Researchers are currently working on software that reduces digital noise to further improve image quality and allow detectors to more accurately capture image changes. We also want to apply artificial intelligence to the captured images to automatically identify the type of defect and see if the inspection process can be further streamlined.

Reference: September 27, 2021, “Defect detection system for silicon solar panels under all-day irradiation” by Sheng Wu, Yijun Zhang, Yunsheng Qian, Yizheng Lang, Minjie Yang, Mohan Sun Applied optics..
DOI: 10.1364 / AO.435456

Renewable energy devices including solar panels and modules, bio-gas plants, solar power generators, windmills, solar lamps, tidal waves energy devices or plants and their parts, will be charged a GST of 12% against 5% earlier.

Under the existing regime, 70% of the gross value of the contract was considered for the supply of goods, attracting a 5% rate. This will now be 12%.

Experts said the increase will negatively affect the growth of the renewable energy sector. “Instead of providing the mechanism to allow refund of unutilized credit on input services and capital goods, the government has increased the GST rate on output supplies which will put additional burden in the hands of consumers,” said Tushar Aggarwal, founder partner at Tattvam Advisors.

The rate change will create transitional issues for ongoing renewable energy projects, he added.

Carbonated beverages of fruit drink or carbonated beverages with fruit juice will attract 28% GST along with a 12% cess, while tax on copper concentrates and other metals has been increased to 18% from 5% currently.

A lower rate of 5% will be applicable on remdesivir, anticoagulants such as heparin, itolizumab, posaconazole, infliximab, bamlanivimab, etesevimab, casirivimab, imdevimab, 2-Deoxy-D-Glucose and favipiravir until December 31.