Solar Now

Despite abundant sunshine, fossil fuels have long dominated the Philippines’ power grid. Now, soaring electricity costs and global supply shocks are driving a rooftop solar boom across the country.

Johanna L. Añes-dela Cruz, News Editor

Asia News Network

View all posts by Johanna L. Añes-dela Cruz, News Editor →

Asia News Network
View all posts by Johanna L. Añes-dela Cruz, News Editor →
A maintenance worker cuts grass next to solar panels at a solar energy farm owned and operated by Valenzuela Solar Energy Inc. in Valenzuela, suburban Metro Manila, on May 28, 2022. PHOTO: AFP
October 20, 2026
MANILA – Situated squarely within the tropical solar belt, the Philippines receives an average of 4.5 to 5.5 kilowatt-hours of solar radiation per square meter per day. Yet, fossil fuels continue to dominate the nation’s power grid, with coal alone generating roughly 62% of its electricity, according to Department of Energy data cited by engineering firm REURASIA.
Structural, financial, and policy bottlenecks kept solar on the margins, and it still accounts for under 4 percent of national power consumption, according to government data.
Then the US-Iran war, which began in late February, disrupted global fuel supplies and pushed up electricity prices. Meralco, the country’s largest distributor, has raised its rates by 10 percent since the conflict began. Filipinos responded by installing solar panels on their roofs.
A June 28 Reuters report, citing Chinese trade data, found that the Philippines has been the world’s biggest spender on solar panels since the war started. Panel imports reached $407 million in the three months through May, up 145 percent from a year earlier.
Why solar took so long
The sluggish pivot to solar was not due to a lack of sunshine or advocacy. It stemmed from how the power sector is built. The Electric Power Industry Reform Act of 2001 largely privatised the industry and split it into generation, transmission, distribution, and supply. The law aimed to encourage competition, but it also created a fragmented system. Clean energy advocates must negotiate with dozens of private power producers, grid operators, and more than 120 electric cooperatives and other distribution utilities.
Renewable energy advocate Philline van der Wolk-Donggay tells  Asia News Network (ANN) that local governments supported early roadmaps, such as the 2012 Renewable Energy Pathways. The privatised market, however, was not yet ready for a full-scale clean energy transition.
Regional gaps persisted. Mindanao, for instance, has historically had among the country’s lowest electrification rates. Mindanao Goes Solar, which van der Wolk-Donggay leads, was formed to address this by organising local solar providers and teaching consumers about systems that can be installed quickly. With the rush underway, she says, “Mindanao is ready.”
Mindanao Goes Solar’s caravan in SM City Davao, Davao City, Philippines.
PHOTO FROM MINDANAO SOLAR
Persistent hurdles
Beyond market fragmentation, the main hurdle for households and small businesses is the high upfront cost of panels, inverters, and batteries. While conglomerates easily secure corporate financing for utility-scale developments, average Filipino families have few green loan options. Van der Wolk-Donggay notes that an equitable transition requires financing tailored to those unable to bear high initial costs.
“Imagine if the Philippines had loan products targeting the average Filipino to purchase solar as much as we have loan products targeting Filipinos to purchase motorcycles and scooters. That is the dream,” she tells ANN, noting that recent finance-sector developments reflect growing interest in solar.
Meanwhile, rooftop solar economics are rapidly improving. A report by global energy think tank Ember reveals that loan payback periods have dropped from four years to 3.1 years. Ember argues that shorter payback times, volatile electricity prices, and recent policy shifts make mass adoption increasingly viable—envisioning rooftop solar scaling up to 3,500 MW with batteries within 24 months, matching the scale of Meralco’s flagship Terra Solar project.
To achieve this, the report outlines three key policy moves: accessible loan schemes, simplified rules for plug-and-play systems, and government-backed battery infrastructure. Together, these measures would lower consumer costs, bolster grid reliability, and reduce reliance on imported fossil fuels. While faster renewable energy auctions will help avert future energy crises, rooftop solar offers a far quicker path to security.
Energy democracy
Filipino households pay some of the highest electricity rates in Southeast Asia, driven by dependence on imported coal and gas and compounded by a weakening peso. In June 2026, the nationwide average reached P12.43 (about US$0.20) per kWh, the highest in ASEAN and slightly above Singapore’s, according to the DOE. The DOE attributed the June spike largely to tight supply in the Visayas, which forced the grid to rely on costlier plants. It also warned that renewed Middle East hostilities could push fuel prices and bills even higher.
Solar photovoltaic technology reduces this exposure by decoupling electricity generation from volatile global commodity markets. Van der Wolk-Donggay says the best thing about solar, and what mainstream media should discuss more, is “energy democracy”: the ability to produce your own electricity without relying on imported fossil fuels whose supply and prices swing. Paired with storage, she says, solar offers freedom from ever-rising rates.
She adds that solar also builds resilience against geopolitical shocks, extreme weather, and natural disasters. This independence extends from households and small businesses to cities, municipalities, and nations, and ultimately to the global scale.
Mindanao Goes Solar’s caravan in SM Downtown, Cagayan de Oro, Philippines.
PHOTO FROM MINDANAO SOLAR
Promoting and sustaining the rush
Turning emergency adoption into lasting energy independence will take policy reform. The “Sayang Ang Araw: Gawing Mura ang Solar” campaign (roughly translated to “The sun is going to waste: Make solar affordable”) is calling on the national government to exempt solar equipment from value-added tax. That includes panels, batteries, and inverters for homes and small businesses. Cheaper equipment for installers means lower installation costs for consumers.
Mindanao Goes Solar also continues to promote solar power across the region through Bisaya-language campaigns, broadcasts, and remote community outreach, alongside city expos connecting consumers directly with providers. The organisation, for instance, has slated roadshows from October 23 to 25 at SM City Mindpro and SM City Zamboanga in Zamboanga City, as well as SM City Butuan in Butuan City.
Beyond public outreach, the initiative helps emerging local solar businesses professionalise, maintains a directory of verified installers, and collaborates with banks and policymakers to streamline solar financing and net metering.
At the national level, van der Wolk-Donggay argues the government should prioritise indigenous energy by pairing solar with wind, hydro, and geothermal. “Combinations of these renewable energy sources for electricity production can dramatically reduce electricity prices for Filipinos,” she says.
“Right now we have some of the highest electricity rates in Asia—easing the burden of households and businesses on something so basic as energy will reap great economic and societal rewards for the country moving forward.”
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Chinese PV module maker JinkoSolar unveiled its TOPCon-based Amorphous-Si Passivating Cell (TAC) technology at its Global Tech Day event in Shanghai on Oct. 17. According to a technical white paper published by the company, the architecture combines TOPCon electron-selective contacts with heterojunction (HJT) hole-selective contacts and a rear-electrode layout.
The design uses an n-type crystalline silicon wafer with two alternating carrier-selective contact regions on the rear surface. Both positive and negative electrodes are located on the rear, eliminating front-side metallization and the associated optical shading losses.
The electron-collecting n-type region retains the contact structure used in TOPCon cells, consisting of an approximately 1 nm to 2 nm silicon oxide tunneling layer and heavily doped polycrystalline silicon. This structure enables selective electron transport with low contact resistance while suppressing carrier recombination.
The hole-collecting p-type region uses intrinsic and doped hydrogenated amorphous silicon (a-Si), drawing on HJT cell technology. JinkoSolar said the configuration improves surface passivation and open-circuit voltage. A transparent conductive oxide (TCO) layer facilitates lateral carrier transport, while the amorphous silicon passivation process takes place at temperatures below 200 C.
High-precision laser patterning and dielectric isolation separate the two contact regions. JinkoSolar describes the architecture as a “2+1” design, combining TOPCon electron contacts, HJT hole contacts and a rear-electrode structure.
TAC belongs to the broader back-contact (BC) cell category, which includes architectures using different passivation and carrier-selective contact technologies. Unlike conventional front-contact TOPCon cells, TAC eliminates front-side metal contacts to reduce shading losses. Its distinguishing feature among BC technologies is the integration of TOPCon and amorphous silicon heterojunction contacts on the same wafer.
JinkoSolar has also developed a full-area passivation approach, called the Global Passivation Process (GPP), to reduce recombination losses across the contact regions. Another process, Multi-Dimensional Charge Passivation (MCP 2.0), targets carrier recombination at cut-cell edges. It uses a cut-before-passivation sequence, followed by chemical, field-effect and hydrogen passivation of the exposed surfaces.
Other cell-level features include high-purity, low-oxygen n-type silicon wafers and a light-trapping structure combining surface texturing, antireflection coatings and rear reflection. The white paper specifies a bulk minority-carrier lifetime exceeding 2 ms and a bulk recombination current density below 5 fA/cm² for the silicon substrate.
JinkoSolar said TAC production cell efficiency has exceeded 27%, with a peak efficiency of 28%. The company’s Oct. 17 announcement identifies the 28% figure as peak cell efficiency. However, the white paper does not specify a third-party certification, test area or average production-line efficiency for the result.
In its first-half 2026 financial report, JinkoSolar separately reported a third-party-certified conversion efficiency of 27.2% for an n-type BC research cell. The company, however, did not identify that result as a TAC measurement.
JinkoSolar identified low-temperature metallization, copper-containing contact materials and the potential use of TAC as a bottom-cell platform for perovskite-silicon tandem devices as areas for further development.
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Oct 19, 2026
Jim Warren is a recovering academic as retired adjunct professor and lecturer in environmental sociology at the University of Regina.
Solar panels. Storyblocks image.
 
When debating with emissions cutting environmental zealots, fans of fossil fuels frequently use China as a bad example to compare against Canadian emissions. Canada’s 1.5 percent share of global greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions pales in comparison with the CO2 belched from China’s huge fleet of coal-fired electrical power plants.
In 2023, China generated 13.260 billion tonnes of CO2 making it the world’s largest emitter accounting for 34 percent of global emissions. Canada emitted just 575 million tonnes of CO2 in 2023. That’s 23 times less than China.
Canada doesn’t even make the top 10 list for emitters. First place China is followed by the US with 4.78 billion tonnes. Our one-half billion tonnes puts us way back in 12^th place.
The environmentally virtuous are irritated that supporters of conventional energy use China as a handy whipping-boy. They believe China has provided the friends of oil with an excuse for not getting on the green transition bandwagon. Our counterargument goes like this: “Our emissions are extremely low when compared with China’s, even if we cut them in half tomorrow it wouldn’t make much of a dent in climate change.”
 
Late this summer climate crusaders were taking a victory lap. They claimed China’s capacity to produce electricity using solar energy has exceeded the capacity of its coal-fired electrical generating plants. Therefore China’s role, as an excuse for our lack of emissions cutting enthusiasm, has presumably come to an end.
Not so fast tree huggers. It turns out that China’s alleged solar success is a statistical trick—a mirage based on a misleading interpretation of what “power generating capacity” means in relation to actual production.
It is possible that some environmentalists and climate crusaders were misled into thinking solar power had passed coal given a Reuters headline that ran on September 1 that reads: “Solar overtakes coal as China’s largest source of power capacity.”
The South China Morning Post ran a similar headline on September 2, “Beyond Coal: China’s installed solar capacity crosses historic threshold.” Albeit the following story includes a qualifying line of fine print stating it will require a multi-trillion yuan investment to actually make all that solar work. But, the article fails to explain why this is the case.
Climate crusaders want people to believe a solar generating installation’s nameplate capacity is the same thing as the total amount of electricity it produces in a given period.
According to climate alarmist math, if the total nameplate “capacity” of  China’s entire inventory of solar power generating installations is X, it means China is generating X times 365.25 days’ worth of solar power.
 
The calculation is faulty because it assumes that solar generating stations operate 24/7. It assumes the systems work in the dark of night. The total is additionally incorrect because it fails to account for China’s grid management problems.
A story identifying the calculation errors/deceptions being made by environmentalists and environmentally-sympathetic journalists appeared last week in the online weekly newsletter published by the Corporate Knights organization. According to the article, China’s electrical grid lacks the system switching technology and battery storage capacity required to balance the ups and downs of on-and-off-again solar and wind power generation. As noted, solar stations don’t produce at night. Similarly wind farms don’t produce when the wind doesn’t blow, and the windmills have to be shut down when winds become too strong. Renewables simply do not provided steady and reliable electricity on a year round 24/7 basis.
According to Corporate Knights, during the first six months of 2026 this meant that over one-quarter of China’s wind and solar power facilities went unused. That translates to 360 terawatt-hours of potential wind and solar power which could not be plugged into the grid. The amount of power that went unused in just six months is more “than the U.K.’s entire electricity use last year.”
The reality is that coal is still king in the competition with solar power. China’s coal-fired electrical generating plants beat solar power by miles. The burning of coal accounts for nearly 50 percent of the electricity consumed in China. Less than 13 percent of the electricity consumed in China is produced using solar power.
 
We’ve seen this before
Remember back in the 2010s when central planners from China’s Communist government decided China was in need of a housing boom? There were huge incentives for municipalities that facilitated new construction and easy credit was made available to real estate developers.
There was indeed a national housing shortage, but the problem was largely limited to China’s large fast-growing cities. Nevertheless, the incentive programs were extended to mid-sized communities on the Tibetan plateau and to entire new cities created by developers in locations that included the wilds of the Gobi Desert.
Thousands of apartment buildings that were built in places nobody wants to live have sat empty for years. The busted boom left a legacy of massive financial losses and a fiscal crisis for the government. Clearly, the builders had overbuilt.
We don’t know if the Communist government central planners who launched the real estate boom still have their jobs. However, Hui Ka Yan, founder of Evergrande, a bankrupt company that was formerly China’s biggest real estate development business, was sentenced to life in prison in 2025 for doing what the government told him to do.
Obviously, the planners did the same thing when it came to adopting green energy. The overbuilding of solar and wind facilities means the wasting of approximately 720 terawatts of potential electrical power annually. Presumably the losses will decline in conjunction with improved grid management and battery storage technology. But how long will that take? And what will be the condition of solar and wind installations that have gone unused for what may be decades?
 
One of the takeaways for supporters of conventional energy production on the Prairies is that we’ve been correct to suspect that climate crusaders will knowingly or unknowingly make use of weakly supported claims to attack conventional energy. The Chinese solar capacity fantasy is similarly employed in their assault on emissions. The misinformation has already appeared in analysts assessments of the crude oil supply shortfall caused by the US war with Iran.
There are energy market analysts who claim that one of the principal reasons the world prices for crude has not yet risen to the $120 per barrel range is because China has been able to reduce its crude imports by 40 percent. Some of oil’s environmentally-friendly detractors have claimed that China’s recently increased solar and wind power electrical generation has helped make its reduction in crude imports possible. That might be correct were it not for the fact China is unable to plug its unused solar and wind potential into the power grid.
China has been able to reduce its imports because it had large oil reserves in place prior to the war in the Persian Gulf and also because it has been able to amp up its coal-fired electrical production capacity.
The claim that Chinese renewables have saved us from higher gas and diesel prices contributes to another bit of mythical hyperbole—the claim that wind and solar are supporting permanent demand destruction for crude oil. That argument doesn’t ring true given the time and expense required to build wind, solar or nuclear capacity. An additional challenge would be the electrification of enough of the country’s electrical vehicle fleet to significantly reduce long-term demand for oil in the short-term.
No less challenging is trying to sort out what is actually happening with energy production in a country like China which is liable to fudge the numbers. It is difficult to put much faith in the data supplied by a country that jails journalists for writing reports that embarrass the government.
 
Editor’s note: SaskPower’s system map webpage lists 30 megawatts of grid-scale nameplate solar capacity for this province. SaskPower’s Where Your Power Comes From webpage shows the 24 hour average output for each type of power generation. On Oct. 7, a very sunny day in southern Saskatchewan, that average was 13 megawatts. If you go to X account @SkElectricity, you can find a log of these reports, including a regular summary on “Solar Saturday” of solar output. Here’s Sept 5 edition. It shows a solar capacity factor over the last year of 22.5 per cent.
Solar Saturday 🌞
(Only grid-scale facilities, not self-gen solar) pic.twitter.com/raxIhoEO3b
— Saskatchewan Electricity Mix (@SkElectricity) September 5, 2026

 
 
 
Details on that Korean/US deal for the same model of Westinghouse reactors Sask is considering

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Qcells plans to launch residential solar panels with US-made aluminum frames by the end of 2026
ALUKO Group’s Tennessee facility is expected to produce frames for 4 GW of solar modules annually
Qcells said these frames will help installers and TPOs qualify for domestic content bonus under US ITC
Solar PV manufacturer Qcells plans to launch new versions of its residential solar panels featuring aluminum frames manufactured in the US by the end of 2026, expanding its portfolio of US-made products.
Qcells said the products are designed to support projects meeting the 55% domestic content requirement applicable to projects beginning construction in 2027. 
The new panels are intended to help residential solar installers and third-party ownership (TPO) providers qualify for the domestic content bonus under the US investment tax credit (ITC).
“By keeping all three major stages of frame manufacturing in the U.S., Qcells is taking a rigorous, transparent approach to incorporating domestically manufactured components into its products,” stated Qcells.
The new versions of its Q.TRON AC and Q.PEAK DUO AC panels will use frames produced at the Tennessee facilities of aluminum manufacturer and Qcells’ supplier partner ALUKO Group. Qcells says these are the only facilities to carry out these processes in the US.
The frames will undergo extrusion, anodizing, and fabrication at ALUKO Group’s facility in Halls, Lauderdale County, Tennessee. The facility is expected to begin full production by the end of 2026, with an annual capacity to produce enough frames for 4 GW of solar modules.
ALUKO Group plans to invest more than $107 million in Tennessee over five years and create 285 full-time jobs as part of the manufacturing expansion.
Qcells has also invested in manufacturing facilities in Dalton and Cartersville, Georgia, as it expands its US solar manufacturing footprint. Its total solar PV module production capacity at these locations is expected to reach 8.6 GW annually by the end of September 2026. In June this year, it launched solar cell production at Cartersville (see Qcells Launches US Solar Cell Manufacturing At Georgia).
TaiyangNews 2024

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The global photovoltaic market could experience an unexpected decline in new installations in 2026, according to BloombergNEF forecasts. The slowdown is largely associated with China, while solar capacity additions across the rest of the world are expected to continue expanding. Stanislav Kondrashov, founder of TELF AG, examines how these developments could reshape the geographical balance of the global solar industry.
Key takeaway: BloombergNEF expects worldwide solar installations to fall from 655 GW in 2025 to 584 GW in 2026. China's projected contraction is large enough to outweigh continued growth across other markets.
Why Could Global Solar Installations Decline in 2026?
The expected decline in global photovoltaic installations is primarily connected to developments in China, which has dominated the expansion of solar capacity for several years. According to BloombergNEF, worldwide additions could decrease by approximately 10.8% in 2026, marking a reversal after a period of exceptional growth.
The forecast highlights an unusual contrast between China and the rest of the world. While Chinese installations are expected to fall sharply, other countries could collectively register another year of expansion.
The figures illustrate this divergence:
Global installations: 655 GW in 2025, compared with a projected 584 GW in 2026.
China: 383 GW in 2025, compared with approximately 271 GW in 2026.
Rest of the world: 272 GW in 2025, compared with a projected 313 GW in 2026.
Expected global decline: Approximately 10.8%.
These numbers suggest that the global photovoltaic industry is entering a period of geographical adjustment rather than experiencing a uniform decline in demand.
"The direction of the global solar market cannot be understood by looking at worldwide figures alone. China's extraordinary weight means that changes within a single national market can conceal continued expansion across dozens of other countries," says Stanislav Kondrashov, founder of TELF AG.
China's Photovoltaic Market Enters a Different Phase
China's projected slowdown follows several years of exceptional growth in photovoltaic installations. The country added approximately 383 GW of solar capacity in 2025, reinforcing its position as the world's largest market for new solar installations.
Maintaining such extraordinary expansion rates indefinitely presents practical and economic challenges. As installed capacity increases, questions surrounding electricity demand, grid integration, project profitability, and energy storage become increasingly relevant.
BloombergNEF's projections suggest that China could add approximately 271 GW in 2026. Although considerably below the previous year's figure, this would still represent an enormous volume of new photovoltaic infrastructure.
What Explains the Slowdown in Chinese Solar Installations?
Several interconnected developments could help explain the expected contraction.
One concerns the maturity of the Chinese photovoltaic market. After years of rapid construction, the country's electricity system must accommodate an increasingly large volume of solar generation.
Another factor involves changes to electricity pricing mechanisms. Reforms affecting how renewable electricity is sold and remunerated can influence the economics of new projects, potentially encouraging developers to reassess investment decisions.
The figures for the first half of 2026 already indicate a pronounced slowdown. China reportedly installed approximately 71.8 GW of new photovoltaic capacity during this period, around 66% less than in the corresponding months of 2025.
Such a comparison must nevertheless be interpreted carefully. Exceptional installation levels in the previous year can make subsequent declines appear particularly dramatic.
"After a period of accelerated construction, the challenge increasingly concerns how effectively new and existing solar assets can operate within the electricity system. Installed capacity is only one dimension of a much broader energy transformation," explains Stanislav Kondrashov, founder of TELF AG.
Solar Expansion Outside China Could Reach a New Milestone
Perhaps the most revealing aspect of BloombergNEF's forecast concerns developments beyond China.
Solar installations across the rest of the world are projected to increase from 272 GW in 2025 to approximately 313 GW in 2026. This would represent growth of around 15%, despite the anticipated contraction in the global total.
The geographical distribution of new photovoltaic capacity could therefore undergo an important change.
For the first time under these projections, countries outside China would collectively install more solar capacity than China itself in a single year.
This does not mean that another individual country is approaching China's scale. Rather, the combined expansion of numerous photovoltaic markets could begin to outweigh the contribution of the industry's longstanding leader.
How Could This Shift Affect the Global Solar Industry?
A more geographically distributed installation market could have implications for solar equipment manufacturers, project developers, electricity networks, and investment strategies.
Growing demand outside China may encourage companies to reconsider where future projects are developed and which regional markets offer the strongest opportunities.
At the same time, the distinction between manufacturing and installation remains important. China continues to occupy a central position in photovoltaic manufacturing and supply chains, regardless of changes in domestic deployment.
The evolution of installation figures should therefore not be confused with a comparable redistribution of industrial production.
Energy Storage and Grid Integration Gain Importance
As photovoltaic capacity expands, electricity systems face an increasingly complex challenge: matching variable solar generation with demand throughout the day.
Solar panels produce electricity according to sunlight availability, while consumption follows different daily and seasonal patterns. Without sufficient flexibility, periods of high renewable generation can place pressure on electricity networks and reduce the economic value of additional production.
Energy storage systems can help address some of these difficulties by absorbing electricity when generation is abundant and releasing it when demand increases.
Grid modernization, improved forecasting, flexible consumption, and stronger transmission infrastructure can also support the integration of renewable electricity.
China's growing interest in these solutions could reflect a broader evolution in the country's energy priorities. However, investment in storage should not automatically be interpreted as the direct cause of declining photovoltaic installations.
"The next stage of solar development will increasingly depend on the relationship between generation, storage, and electricity networks. Expanding photovoltaic capacity remains important, but the ability to use that electricity efficiently will shape the sector's long-term development," says Stanislav Kondrashov, founder of TELF AG.
What Do BloombergNEF's Forecasts Mean for Solar Energy?
Is the global solar industry entering a prolonged decline?
Not necessarily. The projected contraction concerns new capacity additions during 2026, rather than the total amount of solar capacity already installed worldwide. A decline in annual additions does not imply that existing photovoltaic capacity is shrinking.
Will China remain the world's largest solar installation market?
Under BloombergNEF's projections, China would retain its position as the largest individual national market, with approximately 271 GW of new installations in 2026.
Why is growth outside China particularly noteworthy?
The projected increase to 313 GW suggests that photovoltaic deployment is becoming more geographically diversified. Expansion across other markets could continue even when Chinese installations decline.
A More Complex Phase for the Global Energy Transition
BloombergNEF's forecasts offer a useful reminder that the development of renewable energy rarely follows a perfectly linear trajectory.
The global photovoltaic industry could experience a contraction in annual installations while simultaneously recording continued growth across much of the world.
China remains central to this picture. Its domestic market is sufficiently large to influence worldwide figures, even when other countries move in the opposite direction.
The projected changes also point toward a broader transformation in the solar sector. Alongside the construction of new photovoltaic facilities, greater attention is being directed toward electricity networks, energy storage, and the efficient integration of renewable generation.
The figures for 2026 may therefore reveal more than a temporary slowdown. They could mark a period in which the geography of solar deployment becomes increasingly diversified and the industry's priorities extend beyond the simple addition of generating capacity.
 
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Shaker Heights celebrates solar energy milestone at Public Works facility  Cleveland.com
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China’s Leapting, a developer of robotic automation solutions for the PV industry, has unveiled a new autonomous forklift for utility-scale solar construction sites.
Dubbed Auto-Navigation Forklift Robot (AFR), the system can transport pallets of solar modules weighing up to 3,000 kg from laydown yards to installation rows without a human operator.
“The AFR combines GPS-RTK, laser-based simultaneous localisation and mapping (SLAM), and 3D computer vision to locate pallets, identify fork-hole coordinates in real time, and auto-plan insertion paths,” the company said in a statement. “It further features 360-degree multi-line LiDAR, intelligent obstacle avoidance, and a three-tier braking system.”
The navigation system combines high-precision GNSS-RTK positioning with SLAM for local perception and positioning corrections. According to the manufacturer, the system can identify pallet locations, orientation angles and the three-dimensional coordinates of fork openings in real time. It then automatically calculates insertion and extraction paths and adjusts the mast and forks for pallet handling.
The company said the system can also detect whether pallets contain materials and recognise common pallet standards, including European EUR/EPAL and Japanese JIS specifications.
The AFR measures 4.8 m × 1.8 m × 2.15 m and weighs 5,500 kg. It has a standard load centre distance of 600 mm and a maximum lifting height of three metres. Its two-stage, full-free-lift mast features laterally adjustable forks for precise pallet alignment, the company said.
The forklift uses a tracked chassis with two independently driven 4 kW motors. It reaches a maximum speed of 3 km/h when fully loaded and 4 km/h when unloaded, with adjustable driving speeds. Differential track steering allows the machine to rotate on the spot.
“High-strength engineering-grade steel tracks, with low ground contact pressure, are suitable for diverse complex road conditions and provide stable loads,” the company said.
According to the technical datasheet, the AFR can negotiate gradients of at least 30 degrees on hard surfaces and has a maximum wading depth of 0.3 m. It also supports a maximum forward inclination angle of 4 degrees and a maximum pitch angle of 11 degrees. The manufacturer said the machine is suitable for hard roads, desert terrain, gravel surfaces and lightly uneven or muddy ground.
The AFR is powered by a 48 V, 400 Ah lithium battery, providing a nominal energy capacity of 19.2 kWh and at least eight hours of operation under standard conditions. It supports automatic charging and manual fast charging, with AC 220 V and AC 380 V charging connections. In addition to fully autonomous operation, users can select semi-automatic or manual remote-control modes.
For safety, the forklift incorporates multi-line LiDAR sensors for 360-degree obstacle detection, along with audible and visual warnings. Its three-tier braking system combines electronic, mechanical and parking brakes. Emergency stop buttons are installed at several points on the vehicle exterior.
An integrated inertial measurement unit (IMU) continuously monitors the vehicle’s tilt angle and triggers an alarm and automatic stop if a preset threshold is exceeded.
The AFR offers an IP67 ingress protection rating, depending on the configuration. The company specifies an operating temperature range of -10 C to 50 C and a storage temperature range of -20 C to 60 C.
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Grid Corporation of Odisha (GRIDCO), a state owned PSU and the nodal agency has sought bids for undertaking an impact study for developing floating solar projects across the states, seeking Expression of Interests (EoIs) till November 17, 2026  
Through this tender, the developers are required to select solar developers to develop, operate and maintain three units of grid-connected floating solar photovoltaic (FSPV) projects of 75 MW each, collectively, aggregating to 225 MW. Combined with a Battery Energy Storage System (BESS), together this project aims to supply power to GRIDCO.
GRIDCO through the latest consultancy tender requires the bidders to act as the solar park developer for developing solar park over the Upper Indravati reservoir (Upper Indravati Solar Park) under its renewable energy Renewable Energy Policy.   
Under the scope of work, the developer is expected to undertake the Environmental and Social Impact Assessment (ESIA), and prepare E&S with IFC’s Environmental and Social Performance Standards (2012). 
The deliverables include the Environmental and Social Impact Assessment (ESIA), Environmental and Social Management Plan (ESMP), Occupational Health Safety (OHS) plan and associated management instruments including the Livelihood Restoration Plan (LRP), Indigenous Peoples Development Plan (IPDP), Stakeholder Engagement Plan (SEP), and Grievance Mechanism (GM). 
A Livelihood Restoration Framework (LRF) and Stakeholder Engagement Framework (SEF) have been prepared at the scoping stage. The ESIA Consultant would be based on detailed impact assessment and identification of affected persons, prepare a Livelihood Restoration Plan (LRP) as part of the ESIA/ESMP documentation in accordance with the LRF  
The core AOI includes all areas directly occupied or physically disturbed by the Project components and associated facilities: 
The Floating Solar Photovoltaic (FSPV) project would be installed over the Indravati Reservoir (~6.5 sq. km) with a 33 kV transmission line and associated buffer. Launching pad, temporary storage areas.
The developer would also have to build a Power Substation (PSS), Right of Way (RoW) for the 220 kV transmission line up to Mukhiguda Grid Substation. The Reservoir area within Floating solar project area, where direct aquatic ecological impacts are anticipated. The scope of work covers 15 villages comprising of 8 project villages and 7
AoI villages)
These areas are anticipated to experience direct environmental and social interactions associated with the Project. Project footprint included within the following villages. The floating solar project is at Padepadar, Gaura Kurumuli and Paraja Kurumuli. The transmission Line would connect Padepadar, Uparchobari, Podapadar, Tikilipadar, Mahulpatna, Kamaridhi 
The developer is required ti review all existing project information and establish a baseline for climate and hydrological conditions. This includes an initial narrative review of all available documents and datasets to understand the project context, technical design considerations, and reservoir-dam operating environment. 
The following key documents and datasets will be collected and reviewed. The Project design reports and layout plans. It would be required to manage Bathymetry data, reservoir characteristics, and dam technical information and also develop Hydrological studies prepared as part of the project’s technical design.  
The tender also laid down rules for developing dam operation rules, including Full Reservoir Level, Minimum Drawdown Level, flood routing procedures, spillway operation and release protocols Based on this review, develop a baseline climate and hydrological profile, capturing trends and conditions related to: 
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How India is charting a new path into the electric age  World Economic Forum
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A new 5,000-panel solar energy facility covering about 37 acres in northwest Peoria is now online.
Ameren Illinois has activated the $20 million Peoria Renewable Energy Center, more than a year after breaking ground on the site just west of Pottstown along Prichard Road.
The site serves 2.5 megawatts of clean power onto Ameren’s electricity distribution grid. It is Ameren’s third solar generation facility constructed under the state’s Climate and Equitable Jobs Act [CEJA], joining two sites in East St. Louis.
“At a time when electricity prices are rising nationwide due to increased demand and supply constraints, projects like this one can help reduce local energy costs by bringing much needed power to the grid,” said Ameren Illinois chairman and president Patrick Smith.
“We’re pleased to demonstrate to state policy makers and our customers that Ameren Illinois can build it better, stronger and faster.”
Under CEJA, signed by Gov. JB Pritzker in 2021, Illinois has established a goal of 100% clean energy use by 2050. Ameren said the Peoria facility will produce enough electricity to power 420 homes and businesses.
The facility also features a 1.5-megawatt battery energy storage system from ELM MicroGrid, a Texas firm that grew out of a Peoria-headquartered family of companies founded by native Peorian Lee C. Graves.
The system stores excess solar energy generated during peak production, making it available to the grid during periods of higher-than-normal demand.
“By integrating battery storage with solar generation, the Peoria Solar Energy Center is better managing energy production which supports grid stability and maximizes the benefits of renewable resources,” said ELM MicroGrid president Aron Bowman.
“This is especially meaningful to our team because we had the opportunity to work with [commercial solar installation company] Azimuth Energy and Ameren Illinois to bring this technology back home to Peoria, where ELM’s story began.”
Ameren said the Peoria solar facility continues the company’s commitment to strengthening the region’s electric grid, with more than $112.4 million invested in the Peoria metro area over the past seven years.
That includes new substations, high-voltage transmission infrastructure improvements, and technology to help detect outages and restore power faster. 
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10/19/2026 15:52
Solar glass is used as a transparent weather shield and substrate for photovoltaic modules. A coating technology developed by EXXERGY aims to increase the strength of solar glass to such an extent that significantly thinner panes become possible. While maintaining the mechanical properties, the glass mass could be reduced by up to 40%. In collaboration with the Fraunhofer Institute for Silicate Research ISC, the process is being further scaled up. At Glasstec 2026, the EXXERGY subsidiary EXXOSQEL will present a demonstrator from this joint development in Hall 11 at Booth E12.
The expansion of photovoltaics is a key component of the energy transition. At the same time, the production of PV modules also requires significant amounts of raw materials and energy. Low-iron solar glass plays a major role in this; it protects the cells and the electrically conductive components in the module from the elements while also ensuring high light transmission. The stability requirements for large-area PV modules are also demanding. Depending on the design and mechanical requirements, the mass per unit area of today’s PV modules typically ranges from about 11 to 13 kg/m²; modules designed for particularly high durability can reach values of up to about 16 kg/m². This consumes resources, incurs transportation costs, and requires correspondingly massive substructures for installation. Less glass therefore means less material usage and process energy, as well as reduced weight during transport and installation.

Thin, but stable?

One possible solution is to use thinner glass for solar modules. Accounting for 70 to 80% of the weight, glass is one of the most important factors in today’s PV modules in terms of material usage and module weight. Reducing the glass thickness accordingly saves weight and resources during manufacturing, as well as during transportation and installation. In addition, less energy is consumed during production. The challenge lies in increasing the glass’s strength to the point where even thin glass panes are stable enough to withstand hail, snow, and wind loads.

Thermal tempering reaches its limits with thin glass

A standard method for increasing the stability and fracture resistance of flat glass is thermal tempering. Controlled cooling during the production process, achieved by blowing cold air onto the glass, results in a defined thermal stress. This creates compressive stresses on the surface that inhibit the propagation of cracks. The glass becomes more break-resistant. Glass toughened in this way is used, for example, as single-pane safety glass in architectural applications, automotive manufacturing, or the furniture industry. For solar glass, 3.2 mm is a common nominal thickness; however, further reduction to 2 mm and below can only be achieved to a limited extent—if at all—using conventional thermal tempering.

Another treatment, which is particularly suitable for thin glass, is so-called chemical toughening. Here, surface tension is achieved chemically through ion exchange at the glass surface, in which sodium ions are replaced by potassium ions. This generates high compressive stresses in the layer of glass near the surface. One advantage of this method is that it produces less optical distortion than thermal tempering. However, the process is relatively complex, energy-intensive, and time-consuming, and its application on a large scale is limited.

Crack Healing Through a New Coating

Since manufacturing-related microcracks in flat glass play a decisive role in the glass’s strength, this is where the new process from EXXERGY and EXXOSQEL comes into play. With a combination of a new coating material and an adapted application method, surface defects can not only be covered over but, in part, as it were, healed. “Specifically, we create a three-dimensionally cross-linked composite from several components, whose matrix forms covalent bridges within the microcracks at the molecular level after the coating is applied,” explains Thomas Sauer, CEO of EXXOSQEL. This significantly increases the energy required to break the glass. Laboratory tests have already shown significant improvements in glass strength: After several iterative improvements to the formulations and processes, the strength of 2-mm-thick glass samples was increased by a factor of up to 4, and that of 1-mm-thick glass samples by a factor of up to 7, in each case compared to a non-tempered reference. The company estimates that thinner glass substrates could significantly reduce material usage, energy consumption, and CO₂ emissions. A reduction in glass mass of up to 40% could, depending on the module design, reduce the total mass of the module by around 30%. For a heavy module weighing, for example, 16 kg/m², this would correspond to a reduction to around 11 kg/m². The supporting structures could also be designed to be correspondingly lighter due to the lower static loads.

From the laboratory scale to the prototype

The next steps in development aim to transfer the technology from small glass samples to larger formats and ultimately to commercial-scale solar modules. To date, material and coating development has been carried out primarily by EXXERGY in close collaboration with Fraunhofer ISC. “The steps from a laboratory prototype to a large solar module require a great deal of expertise in scaling up material synthesis, application technology, and module manufacturing,” says Thomas Sauer. Fraunhofer ISC contributes its experience in syntheses up to the 100-liter scale and in coating application. Here, both partners are working closely together on material formulation and technology development. The researchers in Würzburg are also supporting the automation of the coating process: “We want to design the application of the new coating so that it can be easily integrated into existing manufacturing processes,” says Dr. Ferdinand Somorowsky, head of coating technology at Fraunhofer ISC, emphasizing the application aspect. EXXERGY is also collaborating with the Fraunhofer Center for Silicon Photovoltaics (CSP) in Halle to adapt the technology to module formats and test larger formats. Together, the partners are now driving forward the next step in scaling up the technology. Thomas Sauer explains what this means: “With our coating development for flat glass, we are now moving toward TRL 6 on the internationally accepted Technology Readiness Level scale. This means we have already successfully produced the first prototypes in standard dimensions under real-world conditions, and stress tests are currently underway. With the next development step, we are aiming for TRL 7 and thus for the actual operating environment.” EXXOSQEL is now preparing the next steps regarding industrialization and marketing.

Project Information
—
The work to date has been funded, among other sources, by the Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Energy through the projects Green Solar Modules (grant number 03EE1161E) and Green Solar Modules Glass II (grant number 03EEM1003), as well as financed by EXXERGY, a company affiliated with EXXOSQEL.
Ferdinand Somorowsky
Fraunhofer Institute for Silicate Research ISC
Head of Chemical Coating Technology
ferdinand.somorowsky@isc.fraunhofer.de

Thomas C. Sauer
EXXOSQEL GmbH
Management
info@exxosqel.com
<
Fig.1 A coating for healing microcracks—EXXOSQEL and Fraunhofer ISC aim to enable light-er, shatter- ...
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Copyright: © EXXOSQEL
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Fig.2 Fraunhofer expertise for upscaling material synthesis and application

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Fig.1 A coating for healing microcracks—EXXOSQEL and Fraunhofer ISC aim to enable light-er, shatter- ...
Source: istock
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Fig.2 Fraunhofer expertise for upscaling material synthesis and application

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Members of Norway’s Green Party (MDG) have put forward a proposal to legalise and facilitate plug-in solar and batteries. The six politicians were each elected to the Norwegian parliament, known as the Storting, for the 2025-2029 term.
Their proposal, published on the Storting’s website, calls on the government to remove “unnecessary restrictions and bureaucratic obstacles” to plug-in solar and batteries, which are currently prohibited in Norway.
It says the move would make it easier for consumers to choose safe and compliant facilities, strengthen the rights of landlords who want to produce their own electricity and remove taxes on clean energy production.
Their statement says plug-in solar and batteries would be able to reduce household electricity bills, remove power peaks from the power grid and reduce the need for the development of other renewable energy.
It adds the technology would also be useful for emergency preparedness purposes, estimating that an 800 W pluggable solar system, valued at around NOK 5,000 ($532), would produce enough electricity to provide a household with hot food and water in a crisis situation.
The group’s proposal introduces a series of recommendations for the Norwegian government, each with a deadline of the end of 2027, including making it possible to connect plug-in solar and batteries that meet established safety requirements directly to ordinary grounded sockets and preparing a national guide for the safe purchase and use of plug-in solar and batteries.
The measures also include establishing a digital registration scheme for plug-in solar and batteries and developing a Norwegian specification or similar national technical standard for plug-in solar and batteries with requirements that ensure electrical safety, fire safety, grid conformity and safe use for end users.
The proposal also calls on the government to investigate, with a view to introducing, an exemption from VAT for solar cell systems and batteries aimed at private households by Oct. 1, 2027.
The centre-left MDG does not form part of Norway’s current government coalition. Their proposal adds that Norway could look to build on the experience of European countries that currently permit balcony solar, naming Germany, the United Kingdom and Switzerland.
Norway’s cumulative solar capacity surpassed 1 GW last month but the rate of deployment has been declining, with 2026 set to see the lowest annual figure since 2021. Growth has been particularly slow in the residential market, which analysts attribute in part to an optional fixed electricity price for households known as the Norgepris that has removed most of the financial incentive for rooftop solar.
The Norwegian Energy Regulatory Authority (NVE) recently proposed a simplified connection process for small renewable generation facilities it says is designed to make it easier for households, housing associations and other end customers to use PV systems.
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pv magazine USA hosts its multi-day virtual event on U.S. solar and energy storage, covering domestic manufacturing, distributed energy and the growing role of solar-plus-storage in meeting AI-driven power demand.
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This farmer was about to get a $20,000 grant to go solar. Then the USDA changed the rules.  Marketplace.org
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ACME Solar signs 300MW/1,200MWh PPA in latest SECI FDRE tender  PV Tech
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Reserve EcoFlow’s new Titan 5000 home battery systems for $50 and get free solar panels  TechRadar
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Glasgow International Airport (GLA) has opened a new solar farm on its site that is expected to produce around a quarter of the airport’s electricity. This project forms a major part of AGS Airports’ sustainability strategy, known as Horizons, which is aimed at eventually achieving net zero across the group’s sites. The completion of this project means the group has met its sustainability target for 2026 by generating 25% of renewable energy for Glasgow Airport.
Located on airport land near Barnsfield Road, Glasgow International Airport (GLA) has opened a new solar farm that marks a significant milestone in the airport’s journey to improving its sustainability.
The solar farm is expected to be capable of generating enough renewable energy to meet a quarter of the airport’s on-site electricity demand. The multi-million-pound project was developed by the airport’s operator, AGS Airports, in partnership with energy transition advisor Ikiagi Group.
The project was funded and delivered by Zestec Renewable Energy, a supplier of renewable energy technology, who will also be responsible for managing and optimising infrastructure of the project over the long term.
AGS Airports is a private airport operator responsible for Glasgow, Aberdeen, and Southampton airports. The project is part of the group’s Horizons initiative, a sustainability and environmental, social and governance (EGS) strategy.
The solar farm is expected to save 1100 tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent each year through the energy it produces from the 14,300 photovoltaic panels on the site.
The project is underpinned by its collaboration with SP Energy Network (SPEN), the electricity operator for southern and central Scotland. Martin Maxwell, the SPEN District General Manager for Ayrshire and Clyde South, celebrated the opening of the farm:
“It’s fantastic to see this new solar farm now up and running – powering a cleaner and greener future for AGS and Glasgow Airport and kickstarting a new era for this thriving transport hub. We’re proud to have played our part in bringing this project to life and working with AGS to ‘look ahead and act together’.”
The successful development of the solar panel farm means that AGS Airports has met its 2026 target of generating 25% of on-site energy for its Glasgow site through renewable sources by the end of this year.
The Executive Director of ESG and Sustainability at AGS Airports made a statement regarding the opening of the solar panel:
“The launch of Horizons marks an important moment for AGS Airports as we set out a clear vision for building a more sustainable future for our airports. Looking ahead, acting together captures our belief that meaningful progress can only be achieved through collaboration. The solar farm is an example of that approach in action and a major milestone on our sustainability journey.”
Following the success of the project, assuming it is able to maintain generating a quarter of Glasgow Airport’s electricity, AGS have said that they are interested in looking at how the solar farm can be replicated at its other airport sites in Aberdeen and Southampton.
AGS Airports have also stated they are interested in being part of launching the UK’s first zero-emission passenger route. Trials completed earlier this year focused on how zero-emission aircraft could operate from existing and future aviation infrastructure in the years to come.
What do you think of this sustainability development at Glasgow Airport? Let us know in the comments below.
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Nationwide, electric utility providers are in a bind. Surging demand driven by electric vehicles, massive data center expansions and severe weather events is pushing aging power infrastructure to its limits. Utilities routinely pass massive capital investment costs straight to rate payers, squeezing household budgets at a time when families can least afford it.
When every dollar counts, waiting for energy prices to magically drop simply isn’t a strategy. That urgency is why many states are looking at how Minnesota became the nation’s premier model for localized, affordable clean energy.
 Minnesota Built the Framework to Help Community Solar Programs Nationwide
Rather than waiting on regional grid updates, thousands of Minnesota households are taking advantage of the state’s pioneering Community Solar Garden program. Originally created in 2013 and subsequently updated, Minnesota’s community solar program is now named in honor of Melissa Hortman. The program serves as a policy blueprint for lawmakers across the country.
Minnesota consistently ranks as one of the largest community solar markets in the nation, boasting more than 800 megawatts of active community solar capacity. The modern legislation ensures that everyday families, not just corporations, directly benefit from grid transformation through guaranteed, income-qualified savings.
“Solar energy isn’t an expensive luxury anymore. It’s now one of the most affordable sources of new electricity generation in the country,” explained Eric Pasi, CEO of Enterprise Energy, a Minneapolis-based community solar developer. “Thanks to Minnesota’s modern energy policy, accessing those lower costs doesn’t require thousands of dollars in rooftop panels.”
Subscribers to local solar gardens can reduce energy costs by up to 15% with no upfront fees and zero equipment installations. Homeowners and renters simply subscribe to a nearby solar farm and receive savings credit on their energy statement beginning this fall.
Scaling a Local Fix Into a National Playbook
The strategy isn’t just cutting bills; it’s proving how local communities can modernize the power supply from the ground up.
“We are a locally owned company, based in Minneapolis, created to give local families direct relief from rising utility bills,” Pasi added. “Our community solar projects now power approximately 10,000 households while helping us build a cleaner, stronger power grid for our communities.”
The rapid growth underlines how hungry consumers are for alternatives. Named the #1 fastest-growing company in Minnesota on Inc.com’s 2026 5000 list, and #4 nationally within the energy sector category, Enterprise Energy projects it will power approximately 30,000 households within the next year alone.
The company is expanding its service into Illinois, where a similar state program exists. “We are providing a scalable blueprint for how the rest of the country can expand access to affordable electricity,” commented Pasi.
How Minnesota’s Solar Gardens Lower Electricity Bills
●      Local solar farms generate clean, affordable electricity for the power grid.
●      Households simply need to subscribe. Minnesota households served by Xcel Energy can subscribe, subject to program requirements and available capacity. There are no setup fees, credit checks or hidden costs.
●      With consolidated billing, subscription charges and solar credits appear together on the household’s Xcel Energy bill. There are no second invoices to manage. 
 
Community Solar Gardens are Better for the Environment and the Economy
Pasi estimated that the company’s community solar gardens currently offset close to 100 million pounds of carbon dioxide each year.
“We also go to great lengths to make each garden as beneficial environmentally as possible. Pollinator-friendly seed mixes are planted in all of our projects. This helps restore the health of the soil. Depending on the project, we may also plant low-growing crops below the solar panels to maximize use of the space. Some of our gardens are even used for sheep grazing.”
 Enterprise Energy also prioritizes American-made equipment for its projects. “It’s important to us to support the U.S. economy. In addition to sourcing from American vendors, we are committed to growing the overall solar energy industry because it will support many high-paying local green jobs.” 

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Available to SunPower Partners in residential and commercial formats, with first deliveries expected before the end of 2026.
LYON, France, Oct. 19, 2026 /PRNewswire/ — TCL SunPower Global, a global leader in solar energy solutions, today opened orders across Europe for SunPower Origin, a new solar panel line built on the eighth generation of SunPower’s back-contact cell. SunPower pioneered its back-contact technology four decades ago and has been mass-producing it for more than twenty years. It holds more than 1,600 solar patents and has deployed more than 15 GW of back-contact panels worldwide. SunPower Partners can order Origin now. First deliveries are expected before the end of 2026.
“Back-contact is where solar mass market is heading, but very few companies can manufacture it at scale. We were the first to put it into commercial production, in 2004, and Origin is our eighth generation,” said Steven Zhang, General Manager, TCL SunPower Global. “Previous generations went onto real roofs and taught us something: about micro-cracks, about behaviour in shade, about what happens to a solder joint after twenty summers. That’s what you can’t buy by switching a production line over. Because we know how these cells age, we can put a 40-year warranty on the panel, and the TCL Group’s vertically integrated supply chain and financial strength stand behind it.”
Origin places all electrical contacts on the back of the cell, leaving the front free to collect light. The cells are patterned using lithography rather than laser processing, a method that TCL SunPower says reduces micro-cracks, and are joined by solder that withstands temperatures of up to 220°C. Shade is the hardest test for any panel: a chimney, a vent or a layer of leaves forces current through the shaded cell and heats it. A 54-cell Origin panel behaves as if it had more than 16,000 bypass diodes, so the shaded cell stays below 100°C and the rest of the panel keeps producing. Origin is certified Class A+ for shading resistance by TÜV Rheinland, and its broader spectral response helps output in the morning, the evening and under cloud.
“We describe SunPower Origin as the original, the safest, and the strongest,” said Karin Alberto-Burkhardt, Director PV Product Management, TCL SunPower Global. “Original, because SunPower was the first to industrialize back-contact cell technology in 2004 and has since built one of the industry’s broadest IP portfolios. Origin represents the eighth generation of this technology platform. Safest, because its back-contact architecture is engineered for superior thermal and mechanical reliability, minimizing hot-spot risk under partial shading while maintaining robust cell interconnections over time. Strongest, because the technology is backed by a 40-year warranty from a company with the scale, heritage, and financial strength to stand behind it. With Origin, installers deploy technology proven over decades, not an experiment.”
Across its 15 GW of installed capacity, SunPower reports a warranty return rate of 0.005%, based on an internal claims analysis conducted in June 2026. A study presented at the IEEE Photovoltaic Specialists Conference, drawing on 3.2 million module-years of field data, supports the company’s reported average degradation of less than 0.25% per year. Origin is warranted at that same level, with degradation not exceeding 0.25% per year, and has a temperature coefficient of -0.26%/°C.
Origin carries a complete 40-year warranty covering the product, its power output and service. The warranty is supported by SunPower’s legal entities in its main European markets, as well as by the company’s long track record of installing back-contact panels and monitoring their degradation and return rates. It is also backed by the financial strength of the TCL Group. TCL SunPower is recognized as a Tier 1 module manufacturer by BloombergNEF (Q3 2026).
The residential panel has 54 cells in a 1,800 × 1,134 mm frame and delivers up to 505 W at up to 24.7% efficiency, fully black. The commercial panel has 66 cells, measures 2,192 × 1,134 mm and delivers up to 615 W. It is bifacial, with up to 80% bifaciality, collecting reflected light on its rear side, and suits commercial roofs where vents, HVAC units, and corners limit how many panels fit.
SunPower Origin is available now to SunPower Partners across Europe. For more information about SunPower Origin, visit https://www.sunpowerglobal.com/uk/homeowners/products/sunpower-origin-back-contact-solar-panels.
Installers who want to become SunPower Partners can apply at https://www.sunpowerglobal.com/uk/become-sunpower-solar-partner.
About TCL SunPower Global
Backed by the global strength, financial stability, and technological leadership of the TCL Group, TCL SunPower Global is a leading solar energy provider committed to delivering high‑performance, reliable, and accessible solar solutions worldwide. The company combines advanced technology, vertically integrated manufacturing, and a strong focus on sustainability to drive the global energy transition. TCL SunPower Global brings together two complementary brands: SunPower, delivering premium, fully integrated residential energy solutions, and TCL-TCL Solar, providing high-performance, cost-effective solar and energy solutions. Together, they meet the diverse needs of the global solar market – from residential rooftop installations to commercial projects and utility‑scale developments.
More information: sunpowerglobal.com and LinkedIn.
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At the center of Elon Musk‘s proposal is a single massive installation. It would cover a sunny 100-mile-by-100-mile section of Nevada with solar panels, and in theory it could supply all the electricity the United States uses.
An EcoBits (@EcoBitsOfficial) explainer says that scale is more believable on paper than it first sounds. The idea becomes much harder, however, once the feasibility of it is put under the microscope.
In a YouTube video, the concept is sized at roughly 4 billion panels over about 10,000 square miles. That is essentially a 100-by-100-mile field in a very sunny place like Nevada.
The argument begins with the sheer amount of incoming solar energy. EcoBits confirms that Elon’s math isn’t wrong in favorable conditions.
That is why utility-scale solar keeps attracting interest. If enough of that incoming energy were captured, it could help run the electric systems people depend on in homes, workplaces, and city services every day.
But the video treats generation as only the opening step, not the full solution. There is the matter of matching the grid to that generation, so you avoid blackouts and overloading the system.
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That day-night mismatch comes up first. Electricity demand does not stop after sunset, so any plan built around daytime solar production has to answer how to deliver energy at night. Battery storage is the potential answer to this dilemma.
EcoBits reveals that matching the necessary storage would also require a huge amount of land to house all the battery packs for a night, let alone all the other disturbances that could arise.
Geography complicates the proposal too. Even if Nevada hosted a huge concentration of panels and batteries, national use would still depend on solving the transmission problems raised in the video. Long story short, the logistics are quite complicated given America’s dated grid, and the various upgrades are immense to deliver energy everywhere.
Output would also vary with conditions on the ground and in the sky. A system this large would need both consistency and scale. There’s also the issue of securing all the land, solar panels, and associated raw materials.
Taken together, those points shift the argument away from whether sunshine is plentiful enough and toward whether the U.S. can assemble the batteries, grid links, and backup capacity required to make solar power dependable.
The video’s broader conclusion is that panels alone would not make Musk’s concept workable in the real world.
One requirement would be storage large enough to carry excess daytime generation into the evening, because the one-farm scenario breaks down if after-dark demand cannot be covered.
It would also require long-distance transmission. With an adequate network to move electricity efficiently from sunny regions to the rest of the country, cities and companies would not need to depend only on power produced nearby. And it would need safeguards against changing weather and other disruptions.
So while Elon’s premise that the sun could power the U.S. with a huge installation isn’t wrong, the truth is that there’s a reason it simply can’t realistically do so anytime soon, or maybe ever.
“The real difficulty is everything else that follows,” EcoBits concludes. “Storing it, moving it, and delivering it reliably every second of every day.”
The solar build-out looks different in practice than Musk’s lofty project.
• In Nevada, NV Energy’s Gemini project is now the largest solar and battery system in the United States.
• In Utah, Green River Energy Center pairs nearly a million panels with 484 Tesla Megapacks for after-dark demand.
• In Wyoming, the Cowboy-Solar project moved closer to reality with battery-backed power for homes.
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Solar Power World
By Kelly Pickerel | October 14, 2026
The U.S. International Trade Commission (ITC) has found that the domestic solar panel manufacturing industry has been harmed by unfairly priced imports from India, Indonesia and Laos. The affirmative final determination by the ITC means that antidumping and countervailing duties (AD/CVD) will be placed on silicon solar cells and modules imported from the three countries.
The Dept. of Commerce issued its final tariff calculations in this AD/CVD investigation last month. Now with the ITC’s affirmative final decision, Commerce will issue its final orders on November 2, and then Customs and Border Protection will continue to collect these cash deposits on imports of subject solar cells and modules from India, Indonesia and Laos. Tariffs on these imports have been in place since the preliminary determinations were issued earlier this year. 
The Alliance for American Solar Manufacturing and Trade, a group of domestic solar manufacturers, petitioned the government in July 2025 for the AD/CVD investigation, alleging that solar panel manufacturers had relocated their operations to India, Indonesia and Laos to avoid existing tariffs placed on imports from other locations. Today’s ITC vote brings a conclusion to the 15-month investigation.
“Today’s vote confirms that U.S. solar manufacturers and workers have been harmed by dumped and subsidized imports from India, Indonesia and Laos. With these orders, fair competition is strengthened just as America needs more domestic energy production to power AI and data centers, secure its energy independence, and keep electricity reliable and affordable. U.S. manufacturers are ready to compete, and now they can,” said Tim Brightbill, co-chair of Wiley Rein’s International Trade Practice and lead counsel to the Alliance.
There are now AD/CVD orders placed on solar imports from a range of countries: China, Taiwan, Cambodia, Malaysia, Thailand, Vietnam, India, Indonesia and Laos. Commerce is also considering tariffs on solar imports from Ethiopia and South Korea, and those investigations are ongoing.
Kelly Pickerel has more than 15 years of experience reporting on the U.S. solar industry and is currently editor in chief of Solar Power World.

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If you’re in need of a super portable power station that can power your mobile electronics for days instead of hours – and then charge itself – then check out this deal. For a limited time, Amazon is offering a Daran 288Wh 600W Power Station with 80W Solar Panel Kit for $186.98 after 50% off coupon code: “L6DDL5D6“. You don’t need to be an Amazon Prime member. The kit weighs less than 20 pounds and can provide you with renewable energy when the sun’s out.

50% Off the Daran 288Wh LiFePO4 Power Station and Solar Panel

The Daran power station isn’t a tiny pocket-sized power bank that you’d tote around every day and you can’t bring it on the airplane as a carry-on (the limit is 27,000mAh). However, at just 8.9 pounds, it’s lighter than most power stations and has enough juice to charge your laptop and mobile devices several times over with its generous 288Wh battery capacity.
It has a total of six charging ports, including two 120V AC outlets (600W sustained, 1200W surge), two USB-C ports (100W/30W), one USB-A port (18W), two DC5521 port (120W), and even a 12V DC charging port (aka cigarette lighter).

The power station uses LiFePO4 cells instead of lithium-ion cells you’d find in some other budget power stations and nearly all power banks. LiFePO4 cells have inherently safer chemistry, longer lifespan, and slower calendar aging than NCM cells. They are widely regarded as the best battery option for power stations.

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Something went wrong
A California Bay Area homeowner exploring rooftop solar received a costly warning before signing a contract: PG&E might replace a neighborhood transformer for free but still charge thousands for related engineering work.
The customer said the shared transformer was already at 96% capacity across 21 households and was told extra costs could range from $1,000 to $5,000.
In a Reddit post, the homeowner said the utility told them it would pay for a transformer replacement if it decided one was needed. At the same time, the utility said the customer could still be charged for engineering drawings and other installation-related work, and the poster wanted to know whether a new solar system would set off those expenses.
A commenter from the same region who had already gone through interconnection said, “The only way you will find out exactly what will happen is for your installer to fill in an Interconnect Application,” adding that the utility would then determine whether engineering work was needed.
That commenter said the utility presented two options: keep exports below the system’s nameplate capacity or pursue full export, which would mean a transformer upgrade and a new service line to the house.
They said the utility paid for the transformer, while they paid for a new power line costing “just under $2,000.” The commenter also said the process could take up to six months and that their service remained at 200 amps, with no main-panel change, before and after the upgrade.
Going solar is one of the best ways to save money on home energy, and interested homeowners can try EnergySage to get free solar installation estimates and compare quotes.
The thread highlighted how hard it can be for homeowners to get a clear answer on possible upgrade costs before the utility completes a formal review.
The poster was trying to avoid agreeing to an installation without first knowing whether they could end up paying for work on a transformer shared by multiple homes.
Several commenters said the issue isn’t just whether solar cuts a home’s use of grid power. One commenter said the bigger limit can be backfeed, writing that the key concern is “peak EXPORT,” which is “probably around 12-1. They upgrade the transformer if it can’t handle total export.”
Another commenter said a solar project can trigger utility-side upgrades because of “peak kVA, uneven loading, phase imbalance, voltage rise/AVR regulation and other protections.”
One more said the utility didn’t charge them and described the process as a “crapshoot.”
Commenters said the process begins when the installer submits the interconnection application and the utility starts its engineering review.
Based on the discussion, that review is when homeowners find out whether they need a full upgrade, can accept a lower export limit instead, and whether the utility will pass any costs on to them.
With EnergySage’s help, the average person can save up to $10,000 on solar purchases and installations. Homeowners can also use EnergySage’s solar map to see the average cost of a home solar panel system by state, along with details on solar panel incentives for each state. Together, these resources can help homeowners get the best price for rooftop solar panels and access available incentives.
Adding battery storage to a solar setup is one of the best ways to protect your home during outages, save money on energy, and go off-grid. Batteries can also help homeowners keep more of their solar power on site instead of sending it back through a constrained local transformer. Homeowners interested in storage can explore EnergySage for information about home battery storage options, including competitive installation estimates.
For a fuller look at how utility rules can reshape the math on rooftop solar, these stories offer more examples.
• In California, utilities face multi-million-dollar fines amid a fight with solar homeowners.
• After buying a home, one owner’s first bill hit $420 despite rooftop solar.
• In Ohio, a homeowner learned that half the bill untouched was still possible after solar.
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FIMER showcased its PVM-75/125-TL string inverter with a rated power output range of 75, 100, 110, and 125 kW at the show 
The company also showcased its cabinet-based PVX-241 C&I ESS, featuring a 140 kW PCS and a 241 kWh storage section  
Together, these products can convert an existing PV capacity to an AC-coupled PV-plus-storage system  
Italy-based PV inverter and energy storage system (ESS) maker FIMER showcased its latest commercial & industrial (C&I), utility, and residential product lineup at Solar & Storage Live UK 2026.  
The company displayed the PVM-75/125-TL string inverter and PVX-241 ESS for C&I consumers. The inverter features up to 12 built-in MPPTs, each rated at 32 A, and supports a maximum PV capacity range of 76.5 to 127.5 kW. It then inverts the DC power to AC in four maximum full-load (3-phase) categories: 75, 100, 110, and 125 kW. It has a maximum conversion efficiency of 98.8% and operates at temperatures between -25°C and +60°C, with derating starting at 30°C. 
Measuring 965 × 380 × 715 mm (W × D × H), the inverter also supports pairing with an existing string combiner box for a revamping project. It can be installed horizontally or vertically relative to the ground or roof level. For safety, this inverter includes DC and AC surge protection devices on its DC and AC sides, respectively, which protect the inverter from transient overvoltage in the event of lightning. The inverter also provides protection against DC reverse polarity and arc-fault current.  
In comparison, PVX-241 combines a storage section and a bidirectional converter or power conversion system (PCS) (instead of a standalone inverter) in a 1,150 × 1,800 × 2,100 mm cabinet. The storage section places four vertically stacked battery packs, each rated at 60.25 kWh and 314 Ah, for a total storage capacity of 241 kWh. This capacity corresponds to a full-load charging/discharging power (DC) of 107.52 kW. It features a liquid-cooling-based thermal regulation mechanism. The built-in PCS inverts the discharge power to up to 140.4 kW (3-phase, 415 V) at 150.3 A and vice versa when charging from the grid. The product datasheet specifies a lower maximum conversion efficiency of 91.3% at system level (PCS + battery) relative to the string inverter. 
This ESS can be paired with an existing PV array via the PVM-75/125-TL inverter through a common main distribution panel. This configuration creates an AC-coupled PV-plus storage system with the grid. 
In addition, FIMER showcased its 300 kW PVS-330-TL string inverter, 2 MVA PVS-990 central inverter, and 2.5 MVA PVS980 bidirectional converter for the utility applications. 
For residential applications, the company featured its FIMER Power Platform, including PowerUNO, PowerTRIO, and PowerX. 
TaiyangNews 2024

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This article is translated automatically.
VSB is implementing a ground-mounted photovoltaic system with 8 megawatt peak on the premises of thyssenkrupp Rasselstein GmbH. VSB Integrated Energy Solutions, the VSB Group’s subsidiary specializing in energy solutions for trade and industry, is responsible for the implementation. The long-term on-site PPA includes financing, planning, construction and operation.
Around 12,000 solar modules are being built on two previously undeveloped areas with a total of 5.2 hectares. After planned completion in mid-2027, the plant is expected to generate around 8 gigawatt hours of renewable electricity annually. This will be used entirely on site and will cover part of thyssenkrupp Rasselstein’s needs in the future. The on-site PPA will initially run for 20 years.
Construction is scheduled to start in the fourth quarter of 2026. CO₂-reduced bluemint® Steel from thyssenkrupp Steel with the ZM EcoProtect® Solar coating is used for the steel substructure.
VSB Integrated Energy Solutions bears the investment costs and is responsible for the construction and operation of the plant. For thyssenkrupp Rasselstein, this means renewable electricity directly from the factory premises, less grid consumption and more predictable energy costs. At the same time, the project supports thyssenkrupp Steel’s green electricity and decarbonization strategy.
“With the project in Andernach, thyssenkrupp Rasselstein is demonstrating the potential of renewable energies directly at the industrial site. As an implementation partner, we take care of planning, financing, construction and operation and create a reliable solution with long-term planning security,” explains Frederic Wagner, Managing Director of VSB Integrated Energy Solutions GmbH.
Dr. Thorsten Krenke, Chief Technology Officer (CTO) and member of the Executive Board of thyssenkrupp Rasselstein GmbH, adds: “Our goal was to cover part of our green electricity needs locally. The result is the construction of an on-site PV system that shows that this is also possible in a grown industrial environment.”
The model enables companies to purchase renewable electricity directly on site without tying up their own capital for the plant – with long-term calculable conditions. Depending on the design, grid fees, levies and other cost components may also fall.
The project for thyssenkrupp Rasselstein joins the PPA projects that VSB has already implemented for commercial and industrial customers – including Carrefour, Hutchinson, Lhyfe, Mercedes-Benz, METRO and Sealed Air.
Colliers has brokered the lease of around 18,400 m² of logistics space for the Waldteich commercial and industrial project in Oberhausen. A leading Asian e-commerce company will move to Im Waldteich 10 in October; DGNB gold is being sought.
GlobalData forecasts strong growth for the global market for high-voltage switchgear until 2030, led by Asia-Pacific. The drivers are grid expansion, digitalization and SF6-free technologies. EMEA remains number two, America is growing solidly; OEMs are scaling capacity.
The Nordex Group has received orders from UKA for around 700 MW in Germany. Nordex will supply a total of 100 N175/6.X and N163/6.X wind turbines and will take on multi-year service and maintenance contracts.
On 03.09.2026, FGW e.V. published the final document of the Working Group on Component-Based Unit Certification. It describes a procedure with early component validation and an integrated, cost-efficient measurement and validation process for generation units and storage systems.
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China Proposes Export Curbs On 12 Solar Technologies, Raising Concerns For India’s Manufacturing Ambitions  SolarQuarter
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The 200-kW rooftop solar system is expected to deliver annual electricity savings of ₹2.5 million
October 19, 2026
Follow Mercom India on WhatsApp for exclusive updates on clean energy news and insights
Rising electricity costs are pushing industrial consumers to adopt rooftop solar systems to cut operating expenses and reduce dependence on grid power.
Manufacturing facilities with available rooftop space can use solar energy to meet a part of their electricity requirements and achieve long-term savings.
Bengal Pipe, a PVC pipe manufacturer in Amta, Howrah, West Bengal, has installed a 200-kW rooftop solar system at its manufacturing facility.
The system, installed by Fender Energy, can generate up to 25,500 units of electricity per month, with estimated annual electricity cost savings of ₹2.5 million (~$26,379).
The project was commissioned last year. The installation process, from procurement to completion, took approximately 30 days.
The rooftop solar system comprises RenewSys 590 Wp TOPCon bifacial solar modules and two Solis inverters, each rated at 100 kW.
The project has generated a cumulative 306.8 MWh of electricity.
Although the project was commissioned in August 2025, delays in the net metering approval process meant the installer installed the net meter only in September 2026.
During this period, the company operated the rooftop solar system with a zero-export device to prevent surplus solar electricity from entering the grid.
According to Fender Energy, the installation and commissioning were completed without any major difficulties. However, the company encountered a maintenance-related challenge after the system became operational.
The PVC pipe manufacturing process releases sticky substances through the factory’s ventilation system, which settle on the solar modules.
These substances can accumulate on the module surfaces, affecting performance and reducing electricity generation.
To address this issue, Bengal Pipe’s maintenance team regularly cleans the solar modules to prevent deposits from accumulating and minimize their impact on electricity generation.
According to Mercom’s Q2 and 1H 2026 India Rooftop Solar Market Report, India added 6.6 GW of rooftop solar capacity in the first half (1H) of calendar year 2026, up 131% from the 2.8 GW installed in 1H 2025.
Residential installations accounted for 84% of total additions. Industrial installations accounted for 10%, followed by commercial installations at 5%, and government installations at 1%.
Mercom India hosts a multi-city Clean Energy Meet series to bring renewable energy developers, vendors, and C&I energy consumers to the same platform, helping them share insights on rooftop solar, open access, and other modes of clean energy procurement. The next event in the series will be held in Pune, Maharashtra, in November 2026.
Rakesh Ranjan
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Researchers are still trying to pin down the health implications.
Photo Credit: YouTube
That “credit card a week” claim about plastic consumption is catchy, but the math behind it may be far less solid than many people realize. 
In a video analysis for EcoBits (@EcoBitsOfficial), content creator Justin Pack argues that while people are still ingesting microplastics, the amount is likely nowhere near that often-repeated estimate.
In Pack’s YouTube investigation, he reviewed studies that have found plastic particles in water, seafood, meats, fruits and vegetables, salt, milk, and beer. 
Researchers generally define microplastics as particles up to about 5 millimeters, while nanoplastics are smaller than roughly 1 micrometer, and those tiniest particles are the hardest to measure consistently.
Pack highlighted a 2024 study that analyzed 111 samples from 16 protein products sold in the United States, including steak, pork chops, chicken breast, shrimp, tofu, chicken nuggets, and fish sticks. In that study, researchers reported microplastics in 88% of the individual samples and in every protein category they examined.
Using food consumption data from nearly 2,000 U.S. adults, the researchers estimated yearly intake from 13 protein products at about 11,000 microplastic particles on average, with a median of roughly 4,300, Pack said. 
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He argues that converting counts like those into a credit card comparison depends on particle size and weight assumptions that newer analyses do not support.
Exposure can begin long before food reaches the table. Pack said farm soil may already contain plastic from degraded mulch, irrigation equipment, litter, sewage sludge, and compost. He noted experiments that traced nanoplastics through crops including tomatoes.
The kitchen can add more. Pack cited an experiment in which some plastic containers, after three minutes in the microwave, released millions of microplastics and billions of nanoplastics from each 0.16 square inch (1 square centimeter), and he said plastic cutting boards can shed fragments as repeated knife use wears down their surfaces.
Beverages can change the totals significantly. Pack cited a 2019 estimate that drinking the recommended daily amount of water entirely from bottled water could add about 90,000 detectable microplastic particles per year to 4,000 from tap water. 
Researchers are still trying to pin down the health implications. Pack noted that micro- and nanoplastics have been found all over the body, and he pointed to an observational study in which patients whose arterial plaques contained plastic were about 4.5 times more likely to experience a heart attack, stroke, or death over about three years.
For the most avoidable sources of exposure, Pack recommends focusing on household habits like avoiding heating food in plastic, using glass or ceramic when possible, skipping pouring boiling liquids into plastic containers, and swapping plastic cutting boards for wooden ones.
He also advises washing produce, choosing tap water when safe, and favoring foods with fewer processing and packaging steps. 
Even so, Pack emphasized that this is not something consumers can solve simply by shopping differently. He pointed to broader fixes such as reducing unnecessary plastic production, keeping plastic out of compost and sewage sludge, filtering microfibers from wastewater, and redesigning food-processing equipment and packaging.
“You can’t completely eliminate microplastics from your diet, but you could reduce some of the most avoidable sources,” Pack suggested.
Here’s a closer look at where microplastics come from and why estimates of human exposure keep changing. 
• Scientists are still debating how worried we should be as plastics reach blood and organs.
• Researchers estimate plastic packaging sheds roughly 1,000 tons of microplastics into food and drinks yearly.
• Swapping bottled water for tap water may lower blood pressure in days by reducing plastic exposure.
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Judge upholds Webster approval of Xerox solar farm | Exclusive  Democrat and Chronicle
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Beijing has proposed banning exports of the technology used to make next-generation solar cells, a move that could complicate United States technology guru Elon Musk’s plan to expand into space solar power.
The ban, which covers production technology for perovskite and tandem solar cell modules, is part of a proposal by China’s Ministry of Commerce and Ministry of Science and Technology to control exports of 40 technologies in artificial intelligence, biomedicine and solar manufacturing. Fourteen would face outright bans, while 26 would require licenses. Products made with the controlled technologies could still be exported. The public can comment until November 15.
Musk said on a Tesla earnings call in late January that the company would work toward producing 100 gigawatts of solar cells a year in the US. Media reports said part of that capacity would power SpaceX satellites.
Perovskite cells, often stacked on silicon in tandem designs, are efficient, light and flexible. On Earth, they degrade quickly when exposed to moisture and oxygen, but space has almost none of either. The cells can also heal themselves after radiation damage, making them a leading option for satellites.
Besides perovskite and tandem cell module production technology, the 14 technologies proposed for a ban include AI-driven malicious code generation and mutation, and proprietary cell and gene therapy process platforms. Those requiring a license include AI-assisted vulnerability discovery and engineering technology for polysilicon lines with an annual capacity of 30,000 tons or more.
The 40 technologies span three fields:
“In recent years, AI, biomedical and solar technologies have been increasingly applied in sensitive fields, and all major economies have imposed export controls to varying degrees. China has drawn on common international practice and imposed necessary controls in accordance with the law,” said a spokesperson for the Ministry of Commerce.
“The aim is to guard against the risks of technology getting out of control and spreading improperly, while safeguarding normal international technology exchanges and cooperation. This will help ensure that science and technology remain a force for good that is safe, controllable and beneficial to humanity,” he said.
The spokesperson described the revision as a routine update to China’s catalog of technologies prohibited or restricted from export, which the two ministries have adjusted periodically since 2001. He added that it does not target any specific country, region or entity.
He said most AI and biotech activity would not be affected, adding that offering AI models to overseas users through application programming interfaces (APIs), apps, websites, software-as-a-service (SaaS) or lightweight on-device versions would not count as an export.
Downloading an open-source Chinese model to run on computers outside China would not be affected, but a Chinese firm would need a license to install a controlled model on an overseas client’s servers.
The proposal follows a September 21 agreement in New York between US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent and Chinese Vice Premier He Lifeng to notify each other of AI incidents that could threaten national security, with Bessent citing non-state actors in cyberattacks and bioweapons as examples.
Musk announced the 100-gigawatt plan on a Tesla earnings call in late January, saying the company would cover the entire supply chain from raw materials to finished solar panels. Days later, he sent a team to visit Chinese solar firms involved in equipment, silicon wafers, cell modules and perovskite technology. GCL Group confirmed the visit, while JinkoSolar said it had signed no agreements.
In early February, SpaceX acquired Musk’s AI firm xAI. The trillionaire said space would become the cheapest place to generate AI computing within two to three years, using satellites with near-constant solar power. On February 8, Musk wrote on X that SpaceX’s overriding priority was a Moon city, possibly achievable in under 10 years.
In March, Reuters reported that Tesla was in talks to buy about US$2.9 billion of Chinese solar manufacturing equipment, some of it needing Chinese export approval.
Citing an industry expert, the 21st Century Business Herald, a state-owned newspaper, said on October 17 that China would allow foreign firms to buy its perovskite cells, but not the related manufacturing equipment.
“Space photovoltaics is the core energy source for strategic industries such as commercial spaceflight, space stations, space computing and deep-space exploration. It serves both civilian and defense needs and bears on the security of China’s space energy strategy,” Zhao Lei, a researcher at the Chinese Academy of Sciences’ Institute of Electrical Engineering and director of its solar cell technology research department, told the newspaper.
“Western countries have long imposed a technology blockade on China in traditional multi-junction III-V compound space solar cells (costly gallium arsenide-based satellite cells), tightly controlling exports of high-performance epitaxy equipment to hold back our space solar development through an equipment gap,” he said. “The situation has now changed.”
The restrictions date back to 1989, when the US imposed an arms embargo on China after the Tiananmen crackdown. The embargo barred exports of defense items and space technology to China, including III-V space solar cells controlled under the International Traffic in Arms Regulations (ITAR).
Zhao said that while China has been shut out of III-V cell technology, it leads in the two cheaper routes, crystalline silicon cells and perovskite cells, including tandem designs, and has the world’s most complete solar supply chain, making space solar one of the few high-end sectors where it is strong from end to end.
He said export controls would let China keep selling its products abroad while stopping foreign firms from using its best production equipment to quickly build their own factories and win orders from Chinese suppliers.
In other words, Musk could still use perovskite cells in his satellites, but he would need to buy them from China instead of producing them in the US.
Chinese firms held 96% of global polysilicon capacity and 91.3% of solar cell capacity at the end of 2025, according to the newspaper.
Perovskite solar cells were first developed in Japan in 2009, but Chinese firms have led the push to mass-produce them. Microquanta Semiconductor began producing perovskite modules in 2023 and GCL Group is building a 2-gigawatt line. LONGi Green Energy Technology set a 35.5% efficiency record for tandem cells in July.
Meanwhile, across the strait, Taiwan’s Minister of Economic Affairs Kung Ming-hsin told Bloomberg in an October 12 interview that the island would add AI servers and cutting-edge semiconductors to its controlled-export list, aligning with US export-control requirements.
Once the rules take effect, unlicensed shipments to China would become a criminal offense under Taiwan’s Foreign Trade Act.
“Going forward, some of our measures on controlled items will correspond to American ones,” Kung said, citing Taiwan’s commitments under the Agreement on Reciprocal Trade it signed with the United States this year.
He declined to say when the new measures would take effect. He added that Taiwan plans to raise billions of dollars for US industrial parks to support a local supply chain for Nvidia and other AI hardware makers.
Read: US-China open hotline to rein in runaway AI
Follow Jeff Pao on X at @jeffpao3

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Pepco has approved ConnectDER’s meter collar products for solar, battery storage and electric vehicle charging installations across its service territory in Washington, D.C., according to a report by Billy Ludt. The approval extends ConnectDER’s reach to a national footprint of 54 utilities serving nearly 40 million households, with additional utility expansion underway.
ConnectDER’s adapters connect directly to the existing meter socket on the exterior of a home. By creating a safe connection point at the meter, the devices remove the need for main panel upgrades, service upsizing, circuit relocations or added backup load panels and system controllers, which the company says can raise labor costs and extend project timelines.
Ivo Steklac, ConnectDER’s president and chief executive, said demand for residential solar, battery backup and electric vehicles in the District continues to grow, while older electrical infrastructure poses a physical obstacle that slows installations. He said approval of the adapters for exterior meter-socket installation means installers can avoid re-engineering entire panels and home wiring, allowing them to deliver clean energy resilience more efficiently while saving homeowners thousands of dollars in total costs and days of labor. Steklac added that this translates into greater installation capacity and fewer barriers, which he described as important for the District’s electrification goals.
The District’s clean energy market is driven by its Clean Energy DC mandates, which include a renewable portfolio standard with a dedicated 15% local solar carve-out. Its urban building stock, largely historic row homes with aging electrical infrastructure, often has 100-ampere electrical panels that require main service upgrades costing thousands of dollars before solar, battery storage or EV charging equipment can be interconnected.
Robin Dutta, executive director of the Chesapeake Solar and Storage Association, said the approval by Pepco DC is a significant win for District residents and installation companies, following dedicated work by several association members to pass enabling regulations. Dutta said the change makes solar and battery storage more accessible for everyday homeowners.
ConnectDER’s IslandDER MSA is designed specifically for whole-home backup and battery storage. It integrates a Microgrid Interconnect Device, current transformers, voltage sensing and real-time grid disconnect capability into a single compact device mounted outside at the meter. IslandDER is installed without reconfiguring panels or rerouting household circuits.
Interactive table based on the Store Companies dataset for this report.
This report provides an in-depth analysis of the Solar Panels market in the World, including market size, structure, key trends, and forecast. The study highlights demand drivers, supply constraints, and competitive dynamics across the value chain.
The analysis is designed for manufacturers, distributors, investors, and advisors who require a consistent, data-driven view of market dynamics and a transparent analytical definition of the product scope.
This report covers photovoltaic (PV) solar panels, which are devices that convert sunlight directly into electricity. It encompasses the global market for finished modules, including all major product technologies and form factors designed for a wide range of end-use applications.
The market data is classified and analyzed according to international trade codes, primarily under the Harmonized System (HS) headings for photovoltaic cells and electric generating sets. This ensures consistent tracking of trade flows for assembled solar modules and relevant apparatus across global markets.
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The analysis is built on a multi-source framework that combines official statistics, trade records, company disclosures, and expert validation. Data are standardized, reconciled, and cross-checked to ensure consistency across time series.
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Manufacturing in China and Indonesia, combined with dedicated local support in India, strengthens partnerships with module manufacturers
GREATER NOIDA, India, Oct. 19, 2026 /PRNewswire/ — YINGFA will showcase its TOPCon multi-cut and XBC solar cells at Renewable Energy India Expo 2026, taking place October 22–24 at India Expo Mart. At Hall 14, Booth C33, the company will present cell technologies designed to help module manufacturers achieve higher efficiency and greater design flexibility, supported by production facilities in China and Indonesia and dedicated local customer support in India.
Cell Innovation for Module Design

YINGFA’s TOPCon 3.0 solar cells deliver a measured cell efficiency of 27.3% and are available in full-cell, half-cut, third-cut and quarter-cut formats to accommodate different module designs. Visitors can view physical samples and discuss cell selection, product configurations and manufacturing compatibility with the YINGFA team.
YINGFA’s XBC 2.0 solar cells deliver efficiencies of up to 28.4%, combining a pure black appearance with a front surface free of metal gridlines. These characteristics make them suitable for module designs where both performance and aesthetics matter.
Both efficiency figures apply to individual solar cells. Actual finished-module performance will vary depending on module design, materials and manufacturing processes.
Global Manufacturing, Local Support
With manufacturing operations in China and Indonesia, including PT. Bintan Cellular Indonesia (BCI), YINGFA combines international production capacity with dedicated customer support in India.
Its India-based team provides customers with access to sales, technical and customer service specialists, helping address product requirements, quality considerations and after-sales needs. By combining manufacturing capabilities across Asia with local market expertise, YINGFA aims to strengthen long-term partnerships with Indian module manufacturers.
At REI 2026, YINGFA invites customers and industry partners to visit Hall 14, Booth C33 to learn more about its solar cell portfolio, discuss next-generation module designs and explore potential areas of collaboration.
About YINGFA
YINGFA is a solar cell manufacturer with operations in China and Indonesia, serving customers in international markets. Its portfolio includes TOPCon and XBC solar cells in multiple formats. With a commitment to “We Only Make Better Solar Cells,” YINGFA focuses on cell innovation, manufacturing quality and customer service.
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“This project shows what’s possible when a community looks at land it already owns in a new way.”
Photo Credit: Encore Renewable Energy
Derry, New Hampshire, has turned a retired landfill into an energy source. A 2.25-megawatt solar project at the site is now operating, and Encore Renewable Energy says it could cut taxpayer-funded electricity costs by about $4 million over the next 25 years.
Built on a closed, capped municipal landfill, the installation is already generating power, Solar Power World Online reported. Encore Renewable Energy developed the project.
“Landfills like this one are often untapped resources in the clean energy transition,” said Chad Farrell, founder and president of Encore Renewable Energy.
The push for the project began with the all-volunteer Derry NetZero Task Force, which spent six years working on the plan, measuring energy use in 40 town and school buildings and building support for the needed state legislative action. 
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Derry’s solar field traces back as much to a local political goal as to an engineering one. Jeff Moulton, chair of the Derry NetZero Task Force, said the effort was backed by the Derry Town Council under the leadership of Josh Bourdon. “The Derry Town Council set forth an aggressive goal of being net zero by 2025 but with a caveat of saving money for the residents of Derry.”
Moulton said, “I am pleased to have led a dedicated group of volunteers who were able to put together a design and project that will provide 100% of the town’s electricity needs for the next 25 years, while saving the town $5-10 million over the life of the project.”
Farrell said the project gives a site with limited post-closure options a productive new purpose while delivering “cost savings and increased energy security for local Eversource NH ratepayers.”
The Town of Derry selected Encore in 2021 after a competitive bidding process involving seven firms.
Farrell said, “Rather than continuing to sit idle, this property will now be generating power for the local community, offering both cost savings and increased energy security for local Eversource NH ratepayers. This project shows what’s possible when a community looks at land it already owns in a new way.”
For homeowners who want Derry-style savings, EnergySage’s solar map shows average system costs by state and solar panel incentives, helping people get the best price for rooftop panels and access available incentives. With EnergySage‘s help, the average person can save up to $10,000 on solar purchases and installations. 
Adding battery storage to a solar setup is one of the best ways to protect your home during outages, save money on energy, and go off-grid. Homeowners can explore EnergySage for information about home battery storage options, including competitive installation estimates.
Derry isn’t the only place putting hard-to-use land to work for solar while aiming to lower electricity costs.
💡Go deep on the latest news and trends shaping the residential solar landscape
• In Mansfield, Ohio, officials greenlit solar farms on old landfills while seeking local power buyers.
• In Rivesville, West Virginia, companies are turning a coal ash landfill into a solar farm.
• At Martha’s Vineyard Hospital, a solar expansion could save island households $550,000 on power.
• New Hampshire signed plug-in solar into law, blocking utilities from demanding fees or approval.
• In Illinois, park districts are getting solar projects at no cost to taxpayers.
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New solar panels on the roof of Harpswell Community School could start generating electricity this year.
Shawn Johansen, director of facilities for Maine School Administrative District 75, said that after contractors receive a few remaining pieces and paperwork is finalized by Central Maine Power, the array will generate about 110,000 kilowatt-hours of energy each year.
The electricity will be sold back to CMP rather than going to the building, but the generation will slightly exceed the school’s current usage. A 2026 report by the architecture and engineering firm Harriman said the building used approximately 87,000 kilowatt-hours in the 2024-25 school year.
ReVision Energy is installing the array. The company also installed solar panels on Mt. Ararat High School when it was rebuilt in 2021. ReVision proposed the array on Harpswell Community School. It is also working with the district to install an array on Bowdoin Central School.
The array is being paid for by a third-party investor, Massachusetts-based Blue Haven Solar. The school district has a 25-year lease for the array and will receive energy credits from CMP, effectively lowering the school’s electricity bill.
The investor, who will get tax credits for their investment, also will pay for the array’s maintenance.
Johansen said the arrangement means there are no additional costs to taxpayers. The agreement does include an option for the district to buy the array after seven years.
Johansen said the district will save a small sum of money, likely about $1,800 in the first year, with the credits from the array. He said adding solar energy is primarily a way to reduce the district’s carbon footprint.
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Boron Nitride Hybrid Network Cools Solar Panels While Keeping Films Tough
Solar panels lose power every time they heat up, and the polymer films that seal them are a big part of the problem. Ethylene–vinyl acetate copolymer, known across the photovoltaic industry as EVA, has been the workhorse encapsulant for decades because it is cheap, transparent, and easy to laminate. But EVA is a thermal insulator, so heat generated inside a module lingers and slowly degrades both the cells and the film itself. A team of Chinese materials scientists now reports a way out of this long-standing trade-off, engineering an EVA composite that conducts heat more than twelve times better than the pristine polymer while still stretching, insulating, and shielding like a commercial encapsulant should.
The study, published open access in Advanced Composites and Hybrid Materials by Fanghua Luo of Northeast Petroleum University and colleagues, including Huaiyuan Wang of Tianjin University, describes a three-tier design strategy that tackles the problem at the molecular, filler, and interface levels simultaneously. The result is a composite film with a through-plane thermal conductivity of 2.96 watts per meter-kelvin, a 1245 percent enhancement over pure EVA, achieved at a filler loading of 110 parts per hundred resin. That combination of high loading and preserved mechanical performance is what has historically eluded researchers in this field.
The first tier of the strategy involves crosslinking the EVA matrix itself. Crosslinking ties the polymer chains together into a network, which raises the material’s structural integrity and helps it withstand the temperatures and mechanical stresses of lamination and long-term outdoor service. The researchers denote this crosslinked matrix as cEVA. Without this step, simply stuffing thermally conductive filler into EVA tends to produce a brittle film that cracks during module fabrication, defeating the purpose of the upgrade.
The second tier is the filler architecture, and it is where the design gets clever. Rather than using a single morphology of boron nitride, the team built what they call a sheet-sphere hybrid network, abbreviated f-BN, from two complementary building blocks: hexagonal boron nitride microplatelets and spherical boron nitride microspheres. Hexagonal boron nitride, sometimes nicknamed white graphene, is an electrical insulator with excellent intrinsic thermal conductivity, making it the filler of choice for encapsulants where any electrical leakage would be catastrophic. The platelets provide extended, high-conductivity surfaces, while the spheres pack into the gaps between them, improving contact and reducing the thermal resistance at filler-to-filler junctions. Together they form a more continuous percolating heat pathway than either morphology could achieve alone, allowing heat to flow through the thickness of the film, the direction that matters most for pulling heat out of a solar cell.
The third tier addresses the Achilles heel of all polymer composites: the interface. Heat and mechanical stress both struggle to cross the boundary between an inorganic filler and an organic polymer, because the two materials are chemically incompatible. The researchers solved this with what they term dual-anchored interfacial engineering. They grafted 3-aminopropyltriethoxysilane, a coupling agent known as KH550, onto both sides of the interface. On the EVA side, the silane was attached through radical coupling, and on the boron nitride surfaces it was attached through hydroxylation reactions. The result is an interface stitched together by both covalent bonds, which are strong and permanent, and hydrogen bonds, which are reversible and can dissipate energy. This dual anchoring means phonons, the carriers of heat, encounter less scattering at the interface, while mechanical loads are transferred efficiently between matrix and filler instead of tearing the composite apart.
The numbers tell the story of why this matters. At 110 phr of filler, the composite film retained a tensile strength of 8.99 megapascals and an elongation at break of 89.75 percent. Those are remarkable figures for a material carrying more than half its weight in ceramic filler, and they reflect the effectiveness of the covalent-plus-hydrogen-bond interface in preventing the embrittlement that usually accompanies high filler loadings. Just as important for a photovoltaic encapsulant, the film maintained a volume resistivity exceeding 10 to the 14th power ohm-centimeters, confirming that the boron nitride network did not create any conductive pathways that could compromise the electrical isolation of the module.
Perhaps the most surprising performance boost comes from a property that has nothing to do with conduction. The composite film exhibited a solar reflectance of 91.09 percent and an infrared emissivity of 96.17 percent. In plain terms, the film bounces most incoming sunlight that is not converted to electricity back out of the module, and then radiates the absorbed heat away efficiently in the infrared band. When these radiative effects are combined with the enhanced thermal conductivity, the researchers measured a photovoltaic module temperature reduction of 5.34 degrees Celsius compared with modules using conventional encapsulation. That may sound modest, but in photovoltaics every degree counts: silicon cells typically lose relative efficiency as they heat, and sustained high temperatures accelerate the chemical degradation pathways that shorten module lifetimes. A passive cooling effect that requires no fans, pumps, or extra components is therefore highly attractive for module manufacturers.
The broader significance of the work lies in the design framework rather than any single number. Many research groups have pursued thermally conductive encapsulants, and many have achieved impressive conductivity figures by loading polymers with boron nitride, graphene, or alumina. The recurring failure mode has been the property conflict: pushing conductivity higher usually means more filler, which means stiffer, more brittle films with worse processability and sometimes degraded insulation. The three-tier strategy of matrix crosslinking, hybrid filler architecture, and dual-anchored interfaces offers a template for resolving that conflict systematically. Because each tier addresses a distinct bottleneck, the approach should transfer to other polymer systems that need the same trio of heat dissipation, mechanical strength, and electrical insulation, from power electronics packaging to electric vehicle battery components.
There are, of course, steps between a laboratory demonstration and a production line. The filler loading of 110 phr is high, and the cost of spherical boron nitride microspheres exceeds that of commodity encapsulant ingredients, so economics will shape adoption. Long-term durability testing, including damp-heat aging, ultraviolet exposure, and thermal cycling under real module conditions, will be needed to confirm that the dual-anchored interface survives decades outdoors. The published study is also an accepted-manuscript version released early under open access, so some details may be refined in the final record. Still, the core demonstration stands: a 1245 percent conductivity gain with mechanical properties and insulation intact, plus a measurable module-level cooling benefit.
For an industry racing to squeeze more output and longer lifetimes out of every panel, the message is encouraging. The materials that surround a solar cell are no longer passive spectators; engineered correctly, the humble encapsulant can become an active thermal manager. By treating the interface, the filler network, and the polymer matrix as one integrated system, the Daqing and Tianjin team has shown that the properties photovoltaic manufacturers were told they must trade off against each other can, with sufficient molecular craftsmanship, be delivered together in a single film.
Subject of Research: Thermally conductive and mechanically robust EVA/boron nitride composite encapsulants for photovoltaic modules
Article Title: Dual-anchored interfacial and sheet-sphere hybrid network engineering for thermally conductive, mechanically robust EVA/BN photovoltaic encapsulants
Article References: Luo, F., Ma, X., Tao, L., Cui, Y., Wang, Y., & Wang, H. (2026). Dual-anchored interfacial and sheet-sphere hybrid network engineering for thermally conductive, mechanically robust EVA/BN photovoltaic encapsulants. Advanced Composites and Hybrid Materials. https://doi.org/10.1007/s42114-026-02087-w
Image Credits: AI Generated
DOI: 10.1007/s42114-026-02087-w
Keywords: EVA encapsulant, boron nitride, thermal conductivity, photovoltaic modules, polymer composites, interfacial engineering, sheet-sphere hybrid filler, crosslinked matrix, solar reflectance, volume resistivity, heat dissipation, mechanical properties
News Source: Denise Maddox. (October 19, 2026). Boron Nitride Hybrid Network Cools Solar Panels While Keeping Films Tough. Scienmag.
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The contract aims to help meet demand for reliable and dispatchable clean energy during evening and night peak periods.
ACME Solar, through its subsidiary ACME Greentech Twenty, has entered into a power purchase agreement (PPA) with the Solar Energy Corporation of India (SECI) to deliver 300MW/1.2GW-hours (GWh) of assured peak power supply.
The agreement falls under the SECI’s FDRE-IX tranche and is set at a tariff of $0.063 (Rs6) per unit, with the supply scheduled to commence from 6 April 2028.
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The contract aims to help meet demand for reliable and dispatchable clean energy during evening and night peak periods as India increases its reliance on renewable energy sources.
According to ACME Solar, the firm and dispatchable renewable energy (FDRE) project will provide 4MW-hours (MWh) per megawatt of capacity each day for any four hours during non-solar hours, maintaining a minimum monthly availability of 90%.
The company will use a combination of solar generation and battery energy storage system (BESS) technologies to meet the supply requirements.
ACME Solar’s night-time connectivity infrastructure will also form part of the project.
Following the signing of this PPA, ACME Solar’s under-construction contracted portfolio is now 4.31GW out of a total under-construction capacity of 5.38GW.
The project, awarded by the SECI, has a tenure of 25 years from the scheduled commencement date.
The contract is domestic in nature and stipulates the use of an assured peak power model for the 300MW of capacity.
Earlier this month, ACME Solar brought online additional battery storage capacity totalling 107.36MW/437.49MWh across two projects in Rajasthan.
The commissioning was completed on 30 September, with both projects achieving commercial operation status as of 2 October.
The company reported commissioning of the first phase of BESS capacity for the FDRE project at Neemri village in Chittorgarh district, Rajasthan, connected to the Neemuch substation.
This facility is expected to reach its full capacity within the current financial year and has a 25-year PPA with a national renewable energy implementing agency.
Another phase at Kelan village, Bikaner district, saw an additional 53.63MW/214.52MWh connected to the Bikaner III substation, also under a 25-year agreement.
ACME Solar holds a contracted renewable portfolio of 8.37GW and an operational solar and storage capacity of approximately 3GW and 4.96GWh, respectively.
In August 2026, ACME Solar secured long-term financing totalling Rs15.71bn from the India Infrastructure Finance Company for the development of a 300MW assured peak power project in Rajasthan, India.
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Maintaining and expanding workforce central for US PV manufacturers at PV CellTech USA  PV Tech
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Orb Energy marks 20 years of solar power innovation in India  Manufacturing Today India
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NTPC Ltd has signed a 25-year PPA with US-based 247Solar for a hybrid power project at Bhadla Solar Park in Rajasthan. The approximately 1 MW project will combine a 400 kW modular 247Solar Plant with several hundred kilowatts of solar PV capacity, marking the first commercial deployment of 247Solar’s solar thermal technology.
The project is backed by the Rajasthan Renewable Energy Corp. Ltd, which has approved preliminary studies, site surveys, and structural tests.

NTPC and 247Solar selected Bhadla Solar Park as the location for its abundant sunshine, and for its easy interconnection for offtake.
247Solar Plants combine concentrated solar power, thermal energy storage and a proprietary turbine to generate electricity around the clock.
As India races to meet surging electricity demand, utilities have recently built coal capacity alongside solar and wind power to cover the gap left by photovoltaic panels when the sun sets and during bad weather. NTPC will test whether 247Solar’s system can close that gap and reduce the utility’s reliance on coal. With the success of this project, its backers expect the utility to look at expanding the technology more broadly across India.
“This new version of solar thermal solves the problem of intermittent solar and wind power, and avoids spending more on outdated, costly, and dirty coal plants,” said Bruce Anderson, founder and CEO of 247Solar. 
“India’s rapid growth plainly requires more clean, reliable and affordable energy,” Anderson added. “Our system can help meet that demand. I’m thrilled that after several years of deep due diligence, NTPC is working with us to bring this promising technology into wider use.”
247Solar’s technology removes the drawbacks of previous Concentrated Solar Power technology. It still captures the sun’s heat with mirrors focused on towers, but the system is simplified, modular, and scalable, and it simultaneously provides heat up to 1000^oC (over 1800^oF) for industrial processes.
The system stores heat for up to 20 hours in inexpensive ceramic pellets, using hot air to generate electricity around the clock with unique turbines that operate without combustion under normal conditions. If the stored heat runs low overnight or during extended cloudy weather, the same turbines can also run on liquid or gaseous fuels, including natural gas, green hydrogen, or diesel, so the plant can keep producing power without interruption.
247Solar Plant’s key benefits compared with traditional CSP technology include lower cost, speed to power, simplicity of design and operation, high reliability, grid independence, and cost-effective baseload power, according to 247Solar.
The demonstration marks an early step toward round-the-clock clean power for industry and residents in India. Success will position Rajasthan as a proving ground for the technology and give NTPC a new tool as it works to meet the country’s growing power demand while reducing reliance on coal, cutting costs and carbon emissions simultaneously. 
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Qcells announced plans to launch new versions of its residential solar panel series featuring U.S.-made aluminum frames by the end of 2026. 
The updated residential product offerings, which include the company’s Q.Tron AC and Q.Peak Duo AC lines, will incorporate aluminum frames extruded, anodized, and fabricated at supplier Aluko Group’s integrated facility in Halls, Tennessee. The initiative is aimed at helping residential installers and third-party ownership TPO providers qualify for the Investment Tax Credit ITC domestic content bonus adder. 
Under the Treasury Department’s domestic content guidance, solar hardware must meet specific domestic manufacturing thresholds to qualify for the 10% tax credit bonus. Qcells noted that keeping all three core stages of frame manufacturing, including extrusion, anodization, and fabrication, within the United States provides greater clarity for installers and financing partners when evaluating compliance. 
The domestic frame offering comes as the statutory domestic content threshold for clean energy projects begins stepping up toward 55% for projects commencing construction in 2027. 
“Through this partnership to produce modules with domestic frames, we are furthering our commitment to U.S. manufacturing, supporting clean, affordable energy and giving our customers the certainty they need to qualify projects for the domestic content bonus,” said Il Hyeong No, head of Qcells North America’s residential business. 
Supply chain localized in Tennessee 
Aluko Group’s manufacturing plant in Lauderdale County, Tennessee, is expected to reach full commercial production by the end of 2026. Once operational, the plant will have a planned annual capacity to manufacture enough frames to support 4 GW of solar modules. 
Aluko plans to invest more than $107 million into the facility over five years, creating 285 full-time jobs. The company operates what it describes as the only facility in the U.S. performing all three major frame production steps under one roof. 
“By carrying out extrusion, anodizing, and fabrication here in the United States, we are delivering a product that offers transparency and confidence at every step of the process,” said Jinwoo Park, president of Aluko Group. 
The move expands Qcells’ broader domestic manufacturing push across its vertically integrated operations in Dalton and Cartersville, Georgia, where the company operates large-scale module and component assembly operations.
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India has been scaling renewable energy at one of the fastest rates in the world over the past decade. Solar capacity has more than doubled in recent years, crossing 150 GW, while the country is targeting 300 GW by 2030. As of August 2026, India had an installed renewable energy capacity of 295.55 GW, including 168.04 GW of solar and 58.52 GW of wind.
But the next concern is not simply generating more electricity. The nation needs the right power, at the right time and in the right place. As renewable generation increases, the focus will largely shift to how effectively this power can be integrated, managed and delivered. The ability to maintain stable, reliable and high-quality power will increasingly determine how far India can take its renewable energy ambition.
Generation is only the starting point
Renewable energy has transformed India’s power landscape, but solar and wind do not generate electricity at the same pace all the time. Solar output changes with daylight and cloud cover, while wind depends on weather conditions. As their share increases, issues such as voltage fluctuations, harmonics, frequency changes and overall system strength become more central.
The challenge is already visible in the form of renewable curtailment. India had to curtail 8,133 GWh of solar power from April to June 2026 because of transmission limitations and grid-security regulations, although demand for peak power hit a record 270 GW. This showed that generating more renewable electricity was only half the battle. The grid must also be capable of absorbing and moving that power when it is produced.
The real measure of progress, therefore, should not be how much renewable capacity India installs, but how much of that capacity can be delivered when and where it is needed.
Power quality will become a bigger priority
As renewable energy grows, the way electricity behaves and is managed is also changing. Solar and battery systems rely heavily on power electronics, unlike traditional power sources. As their share increases, issues such as voltage fluctuations, harmonics, frequency changes and overall system strength become largely significant.
These are not abstract technical concerns. Poor power quality can affect industrial equipment, sensitive electronics, data centres and other high-demand applications. As the economy becomes electrified and digital, consumers will expect not just access to electricity, but a stable and predictable supply.
The government is already preparing for this transition through improved renewable forecasting and real-time monitoring, automatic generation control, and support technologies like Static Synchronous Compensators (STATCOMs) and synchronous condensers. As renewable capacity expands, these capabilities will be as crucial as bringing on new generation.
Storage needs to do more than just store energy
Energy storage will be central to this transition, but it is more than just storing excess solar energy for later use in the evening. Batteries can help regulate fluctuations, assist with frequency and voltage management, and react rapidly when power needs a change. Pumped storage can deliver longer duration flexibility to complement battery systems.
The need for this flexibility is becoming clearer as electricity demand rises in the evening. India met an all-time high peak electricity demand of 256.1 GW in April 2026 without any shortage, with solar contributing 21.5% of generation at the time of peak demand. This highlights the need to extend renewable power beyond solar hours. The National Electricity Plan projects 47.24 GW or 236 GWh of BESS and 26.69 GW or 175 GWh of pumped storage by 2031-32.
The focus, therefore, should not just be on how much storage the country adds, but on how effectively it can support a more flexible and trustworthy power system.
The grid needs to become more responsive
Further, renewable growth will require closer coordination between generation, transmission, storage and demand. Better forecasting can help system operators anticipate changes in renewable output. Dynamic reactive power support, advanced monitoring, and STATCOMs and synchronous condensers can strengthen grid performance.
The growth of transmission will be just as necessary. In this year, almost 21 GW of renewable capacity has been operating through temporary grid connections, with transmission restrictions already emerging as a substantial source of curtailment.
This creates a clear case for combining physical infrastructure with digital and technological solutions. Transmission expansion cannot always move at the same pace as renewable deployment, making technologies that improve flexibility, forecasting, storage and real-time management significant.
Reliability will define the clean energy transition
India has already demonstrated that renewable capacity can be added at scale. The next test is whether this capacity can translate into reliable, flexible and high-quality electricity. Power quality therefore needs to be treated as an essential part of the renewable energy transition, rather than a downstream technical issue. The future grid will need to handle changing renewable output, respond quickly to shifts in demand and keep power stable under changing conditions.
The country’s renewable opportunity is no longer only about producing more clean electricity. It is about making that electricity more usable, dependable, and responsive to the needs of a growing economy. As renewable penetration rises, this ability will increasingly determine the real value of the capacity being added.
The views and opinions expressed in this article are the author’s own, and do not necessarily reflect those held by pv magazine.
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The Colorado State Board of Land Commissioners approved a land use lease for the 120 MW Mirasol Solar Project on 1,140 acres of state trust land in Pueblo County, making it the largest solar installation in agency history. 
The project anchors a broader push by Colorado Governor Jared Polis’ administration to deploy renewable energy infrastructure across state-owned parcels. Revenue generated from the project’s lease agreement flows directly to Colorado’s Public School Fund. The state’s public school endowment recently surpassed $2 billion in total assets as the Land Board marks its 150th year.
Developed by Mirasol Energy Center, LLC, a subsidiary of NextEra Energy, the project is located on 1,140 acres approximately five miles south of Avondale in Pueblo County. County land-use filings authorize a facility size of up to 200 MW of photovoltaic solar generation alongside 200 MW of battery energy storage, interconnecting to the Public Service Company of Colorado (PSCo / Xcel Energy) grid via a new 230 kV transmission line hookup at the existing Mirasol Switchyard.
Following local permit extensions and state land lease approvals, the project is scheduled to enter commercial operation in late 2028. 
State officials structured the lease to combine commercial solar generation with utility-scale battery energy storage systems. Land Board administrators noted that the project helps the agency advance toward its administrative target of hosting 750 MW of clean energy capacity across its statewide portfolio.
“Surpassing $2 billion in the State Land Board’s 150th year is a powerful example of history with purpose,” said State Land Board Director Nicole Rosmarino. “The value generated from these lands does not end with a single lease or a single generation. It becomes part of an enduring trust that will continue supporting Colorado students well into the future.”
The approval aligns with constitutional mandates requiring the Land Board to generate consistent financial returns for K-12 public education while applying statutory conservation stipulations across leased acreage. Project development timelines and interconnection schedules will proceed following local county permit filings.
According to Solar Energy Industries Association market reports, Colorado hosts 5.77 GWdc of installed solar capacity alongside 2.3 GWh of energy storage. The state market accounts for $11.1 billion in total solar investment, 170,281 individual installations, and supports 8,071 solar jobs across 379 local companies.
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Exports of solar cells and panels from China in September 2026 declined by 6.4% compared with September last year. During the month, the country shipped 1.21 million metric tons of such equipment abroad, OilPrice reports, citing customs data provided by Reuters.
Compared with August, export volumes increased. At the same time, overseas shipments of Chinese solar equipment have fallen by 9.5% since the beginning of the year.
Exports of solar cells and panels began to decline in May after Beijing abolished the export VAT rebate for photovoltaic products, including solar cells and panels, from April 1. According to the publication, the tax policy change increased export costs and made Chinese photovoltaic products more expensive on the international market.
More current news is available on the UA.News Telegram channel Telegram.
China also intends to abolish the export VAT rebate for battery products from January 1, 2027.
At the same time, Chinese authorities are proposing a new trade policy that could restrict exports of certain solar technologies. In particular, this concerns technologies for producing high-efficiency products based on perovskite, tandem solar cells, polysilicon, silicon wafers, and crystalline silicon cells.
The proposed changes are part of a broader initiative to restrict exports of up to 40 technologies in artificial intelligence, biomedicine, and solar energy. China’s Ministry of Commerce and Ministry of Science and Technology have launched a month-long public consultation on adjusting the list of technologies subject to export bans or restrictions.
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Solar panels on the roof of a business in Yangon / GCL Solar
Contractors warn that a new regime mandate requiring installation of solar power systems in all high-rises and commercial buildings will send construction costs soaring in Myanmar. The directive further squeezes construction companies already pinched by a shortage of materials, import restrictions, and severe currency volatility.
The Yangon City Development Committee’s Engineering Department issued the order on October 1 as part of a nationwide push for solar amid deepening power blackouts.
From November 1, all commercial projects and high-rise buildings must install solar panels sufficient to power elevators and emergency lighting. For commercial buildings, solar systems must be integrated with power supplied by the Yangon Electricity Supply Corporation (YESC).
The order applies to existing projects, buildings under construction, and those awaiting Building Completion Certificates required for habitation.
“We have been handed the order at a time when prices of solar panels and related equipment are rising daily,” complained a Mandalay‑based builder. “Steel and cement prices are already soaring, so this adds yet another burden.”
Meanwhile, industry insiders warn of a scarcity of skilled technicians capable of installing large solar systems, creating technical and financial hurdles. “Household systems won’t power elevators, which require commercial‑grade solar systems,” the manager of a solar dealership explained. “Installation takes at least two months and costs around 100 million kyat.”
Solar imports to feed surging demand created by the new mandate are controlled by Aung Pyae Sone, son of regime chief Min Aung Hlaing.
Aung Pyae Sone swiftly cornered the lucrative market after his father’s regime waived tax on solar imports in April 2023 under the pretext of boosting the energy grid. His Venus Essential company also holds licenses to supply solar equipment for projects in Naypyitaw and planned 40-megawatt solar power plants in Taungdwingyi, Salin, Pakokku, Pauk, Chauk and Kyunchaung.
The solar mandate comes as regime energy rationing intensifies with more frequent rolling blackouts this year.
“They cut electricity during extreme heat, then order solar systems to be installed,” said a former political prisoner from Mandalay. “But only one company — belonging to the coup leader son — is allowed to import and sell the equipment nationwide. This is not aimed at solving the power crisis, but exploiting authority for personal profit.”
On October 5, the Electricity and Energy Ministry introduced rolling four-hour blackouts under the pretext of surging demand during the El Niño heatwave. Since then, households in Yangon, Mandalay and Naypyitaw have faced daily outages.
The power crisis has driven prices of solar panels and related equipment to record highs. In early August, a 500‑watt panel cost around 650,000 kyat. By mid‑October, the price had surged past one million kyat, putting solar systems beyond the reach of ordinary families.
…
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The arrest of ‘kickback king’ Lt-Gen Moe Myint Tun, once seen as a possible successor to Min Aung Hlaing, comes…
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The military regime has also lost control of all border trade in neighboring northern Shan State.
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Solar is currently the cheapest source of electricity in the UK, yet fewer than 10% of households across the country currently have solar panels.
That is a huge missed opportunity not only for Britons struggling with the cost of energy but for the UK Government, whose ambitious net zero goals depend on nationwide decarbonisation.
Fuse Energy, Europe’s fastest growing energy company, has a solution that could put solar power in the hands of millions more UK citizens.
The London-based firm has today announced that Jules, a first-of-its-kind plug-in solar and battery storage system, is now available for pre-order in the UK.
The launch of Jules comes less than two months after the UK passed legislation in August allowing plug-in solar panels to be sold in the country for the first time.
Demand for the plug-in kits has been impressive since then with Octopus Energy, the UK’s premier energy provider, selling out of its stock multiple times.
The appeal of these systems is the democratising effect it has on solar energy.
Traditional solar arrays don’t, after all, work for everybody, including renters, flat dwellers or people with insufficient roof space.
That is to say nothing of the affordability of roof-mounted solar systems. According to Fuse, these systems often cost between £7,000 (US$9,300) and £8,000 (US$10,600) which is out of reach for many Britons.
Plug-in systems, on the other hand, are far less expensive. Single panel systems are available for as little as £330 (US$440) while dual panel kits can be found for around £450 (US$600).
The installation is simple, requiring only a garden, a wall or a balcony rather than a rooftop rig.
So, what makes Fuse’s new offering distinct?
Jules connects up to four 500W panels to a standard socket, which gives a combined output of 2,000W – the government mandated output limit for plug-in arrays.
The key difference between Jules and the other plug-in solar systems on the UK market today is its battery storage element.
Jules adds a 2.5kWh battery, so surplus power can be stored when it is cheap and used later when it is not.
Fuse’s own battery management software decides when to store power and when to use it.
It draws on solar forecasts, household usage and live prices, and the company says machine learning helps trim bills further still.
The software builds on the real-time system Fuse already uses to bill customers against half-hourly wholesale prices.
On cloudy days, Jules can also charge from the grid when electricity is at its cheapest, meaning it is always working in the owner’s favour.
Fuse’s announcement of the Jules system comes at a good time for UK customers. 
For the past few years, UK households have had to deal with sky-high energy prices as a result of three consecutive crises: the COVID-19 pandemic, the Russia-Ukraine war and the Strait of Hormuz crisis.
To help Britons cope with the rising cost of power, the government introduced an energy price cap, though that cap rose by 4% at the start of October, taking the average annual household energy bill to around £1,723 (US$2,290).
Having access to cheap solar power will therefore come as a relief to many UK households struggling with utility bills.
Widening access to solar energy is something Fuse’s Co-Founder and CEO, Alan Chang, is passionate about.
“Solar has been a club for homeowners with the right roof and eight grand to spare,” he says. 
“That’s backwards. It’s the cheapest power in Britain, and the only things stopping most households using it are cost and complexity.”
“Jules removes both and starts cutting bills from day one. We will keep reinvesting everything we make until low-cost, abundant power is the default for everyone.”
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Four proposed solar, wind, and battery energy storage projects that would add a combined 12.66 GW of new generation capacity to the grid have been successful in the South Australian government’s competitive tender process for land released under the state’s renewable energy framework.
The successful proposals have now secured the right to apply for a renewable energy feasibility licence in the Whyalla West release area, part of more than 11,000 square kilometres of land opened by the state government earlier this year for the potential development of large-scale renewables projects.
The successful projects include a 4.7 GW wind and solar proposal from South Australia-based Altra Energy, a 360 MW solar proposal from French developer Neoen, and a 1.6 GW wind project proposed by Heron Energy. Australian developer Windlab has proposed the largest project, combining up to 6 GW of solar and wind energy generation. The project’s first stage is expected to comprise up to 1 GW of wind generation and battery energy storage.
South Australian Energy Minister Tom Koutsantonis said the scale of the proposed developments represents one of the largest renewable energy opportunities released in the state, adding the projects could underpin the next era of green industrial growth in the Upper Spencer Gulf region.
“This is an extraordinary opportunity for Whyalla and the Upper Spencer Gulf, with almost 13 GW of proposed renewable energy generation that could help shape the region’s industrial future,” he said.
“For generations, Whyalla has been one of South Australia’s great industrial centres. We want to build on that strength, attracting new investment and creating opportunities for the next generation of industry.”
Koutsantonis acknowledged that all four projects are at an early stage, and that there is significant work ahead, but said their success in the tender process is an important step towards unlocking the region’s renewable energy potential.
The successful companies can now apply for renewable energy feasibility licences. These would allow developers to undertake detailed technical, commercial and environmental investigations. Any construction and operation would require a separate renewable energy infrastructure licence.
Windlab Chief Development Officer Nathan Blundell said the region’s renewable resources and established industrial sector make it especially compelling for development.
“Whyalla West combines exceptional renewable energy resources, significant development scale and proximity to established and emerging industrial demand,” he said.
Altra Energy Director Andrew Newman said there is an opportunity to power the next generation of industry in the region, which has been heavily impacted by the recent closure of the Whyalla Steelworks.
“The Upper Spencer Gulf has always been a place with a strong industrial history, and this is a chance to power the next generation of that industry,” he said. “We’re already working with major energy users on how this energy will be used.” 
The announcement of the successful tender applicants, comes after the state government earlier this month announced the pipeline of large-scale renewable energy and storage projects under construction or with development approval in South Australia has rocketed in value to more than $32 billion, with almost $7 billion worth of projects already up and running,
South Australia is targeting 100% net renewables by the end of 2027 although Koutsantonis recently hinted the state might not achieve its goal.
“I think we are going to get to 100%. I am confident we can meet that target, but the question for us is going to be is when in 2027 we hit that target” he said during a press conference marking the start of construction on Tilt Renewables’ 288 MW Palmer wind farm 70 kilometres east of Adelaide.
“If we overshoot it a bit, it gets into a little bit of 2028, fine. But the ambition is what’s important. The ambition is what drives the government’s agenda here.”
Government data shows renewables, primarily solar and wind, accounted for 77.1% of the South Australia’s net electricity generation in the 2025 calendar year.
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In Texas, a DIY solar owner had to prove roof wind load, as others say permitting ‘doubled’ costs  Yahoo
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The business of solar grazing, using animals to manage vegetation at solar sites, has taken off in along with the growth of solar in the U.S. According to Stacie Peterson, executive director of the American Solar Grazing Association (ASGA), solar grazing became a business in 2018. This was one year before the U.S. achieved two million solar installations.
The United States Solar Grazing 2024 Census was the first to attempt to capture the full scope and scale of U.S. solar grazing. Conducted by ASGA in conjunction with U.S. Department of Energy National Lab of the Rockies (NREL), the census found that over 113,000 sheep grazed through fields of solar panels on 129,000 acres of land. The 2025 census has not yet been released, but Peterson told pv magazine USA that she believes the numbers have greatly increased.
The ASGA Solar Grazing Map is a resource for solar grazers and solar site operators and developers to connect with each other and build partnerships. Credit: American Solar Grazing Association
What solar grazers bring to solar sites is expertise in agriculture, land stewardship, vegetation management, soil health knowledge and forage and weed knowledge, according to Peterson. Graziers provide additional benefits to solar developers or owners including their connections within the local community and their deep understanding of the land.
Having a regular physical presence at the site is another plus, which Rebekah Pierce, solar grazer and owner of New York-based J&R Pierce Family Farms said has great value to O&M teams. “It’s hard to quantify on paper what being on site means to the O&M team, but we’re there every other day. If we see an issue that needs to be addressed like a loose wire or a hole in a fence, we let them know and that issue is addressed.”
While most solar grazing is done with sheep, J&R Pierce Family Farm raises cows as well as sheep. Pierce proposed a cattle-grazing pilot to Nexamp, a solar developer that grazed livestock at 89 sites this past season across five states for a total of almost 2,000 acres, according to Keith Hevenor, communications manager.
“We began our grazing program in 2019 with just one site and have been expanding significantly each year since,” Hevenor said. “We are looking forward to even more progress next year and love that our grazing partners are able to continue an agricultural application on these solar farms while providing a necessary service for us in a safer and more sustainable way.”
The cow pilot began last summer on two of Nexamp’s solar sites in Fort Covington, New York. Five cattle, including one bull, grazed among the solar modules mounted on trackers, and it was a success with the cows showing “no unusual behavior,” according to Pierce. She said that sheep remain the most flexible option for solar sites, especially those that were not designed for grazing larger animals. Pierce noted, however, that grazing cattle is worth consideration, especially when looking at market potential and the fact that Americans consume far more beef than lamb.
J&R Pierce Family Farm grazed cattle on two of Nexamp’s solar projects in New York state. Credit: J&R Pierce Family Farm
The arrangement between the solar grazer and the developer are different depending on region and for different graziers, Peterson said. In addition to signing an agreement that works for both parties, Pierce stressed that communication is key, so it’s important to have a connection with the right person in the company, especially in light of the fact that solar projects are commonly acquired and new people take the helm.
Many times, enhancing communication requires dispelling misconceptions. Pierce said that in most cases, livestock are less risky than mechanical mowers and other farm equipment. She said sheep don’t chew on wires and damage things, they don’t kick up rocks, they’re not creating fire risk. These misconceptions, she said, just aren’t true and the benefits are many.
A main challenge for both parties is in educating one another about priorities and how they can work together successfully.
“The more corporate world of solar companies can be quite the dichotomy from the one of farmers/ranchers, and vice versa,” said Matt Kovarik of Maine-based Black Earth Grazing. “Once we both do a little work of educating each other on our systems, the partnership can serve both interests and work out quite successfully.”
ReVision Energy, a renewable energy contracting company based in New England, has partnered since 2024 with Black Earth Grazing on a dual-management solar grazing program. It’s been so successful that the farmers changed the name from Black Earth Forest Farm to Black Earth Grazing. They started with 40 ewes and now manage a flock of several hundred. They’re currently responsible for 11 of ReVision’s community solar sites, and the flock keeps growing as more solar sites become available.
The many benefits of solar grazing for solar companies include vegetation management that requires fewer fossil fuels than mechanical methods, a human presence on site and a connection to local graziers who provide products to the community pay taxes, support local services and more.
“We are there to provide vegetation management, but we are a bit more invested in the land and its productivity than a mowing crew would be, as we are deriving benefits from a healthy well-managed pasture that feeds our sheep,” said .
For the grazier, the benefits include the pay they receive for performing land stewardship and vegetation management and access to a greater land area that enables them to expand the size of their operations.
Solar grazing offers a cost-effective solution to land stewardship and vegetation management, with many other tangible benefits as a bonus. For solar developers interested in solar grazing, ASGA offers a one-day workshop for site operations and management teams, developers, asset managers and sustainability teams. Participants receive a Level 1 Solar Grazing Management Certification.
Register for pv magazine USA week to learn more about solar grazing October 22 in a keynote fireside chat with Silicon Ranch, one of the leading solar grazing installers in the U.S.

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Collin Rugg News brings you the latest updates from the US and around the world, fast.
Rooftop photovoltaic arrays rely almost entirely on rigid silicon wafers, but a profound shift is unfolding beneath the glass: alternative crystal coatings called perovskites are now matching conventional silicon performance, with laboratory prototypes reaching conversion rates above 25 percent. The central issue deciding whether this hardware replaces standard domestic panels comes down to operational life. Silicon maintains steady power generation across twenty-five years of British rain, frost, and summer heat, while standard perovskite compounds degrade rapidly when exposed to moisture and ambient warmth.
Understanding the balance between perovskite solar cell efficiency vs silicon determines whether your next domestic installation will stick with legacy wafers or adopt cutting-edge hybrid layers.
Commercial silicon modules fitted across homes and commercial roofs across the UK typically convert roughly 20 to 22 percent of incoming sunlight into usable domestic electricity. Single-junction silicon faces a strict physical ceiling, making incremental gains increasingly expensive to engineer.
Perovskites take a different route. Instead of demanding energy-heavy furnaces running at extreme temperatures to melt and purify quartz, perovskite crystals form via low-temperature solution processing. They can be coated, printed, or sprayed onto surfaces at a fraction of the thermal energy cost. When tuned correctly, their crystalline lattice absorbs different wavelengths of the solar spectrum than silicon does.
A solar cell is a stack of dissimilar materials, and every junction between the absorber and its transport layers can either help or hinder the flow of electrons and holes.
By pairing both materials into tandem cells, where a perovskite layer sits directly on top of a base silicon wafer, the combined structure captures broad spectrum light that either layer would waste on its own. This tandem design represents the actual commercial target for next-generation domestic installations.
If thin-film perovskite delivers comparable or superior conversion rates with cheaper fabrication routes, why does silicon remain the undisputed standard on British housing? The challenge lies in long-term chemical durability.
Silicon is mechanically brittle, yet chemically robust. Once sealed against air, a traditional panel reliably endures decades of British weather cycles. In contrast, untamed perovskite suffers from delicate surface chemistry:
Addressing these degradation mechanisms has occupied global material laboratories seeking to deliver commercial-grade hardware.
A major review published in the Journal of Materials Science, led by Zhiyan Sun and a research team at Liaoning Petrochemical College, outlines a molecular solution to the stability bottleneck: designer room-temperature salts known as ionic liquids.
Because these salts consist of paired organic cations and modular anions, their structures can be tuned to interact with specific weak spots in the crystal lattice. Research catalogs multiple operational breakthroughs achieved via these additives:
Shifting high-efficiency formulations from university benches to working power generation involves intricate global manufacturing lines. Commercial development faces international trade realignments, particularly around manufacturing expertise. China has initiated regulatory consultations covering export controls on critical solar equipment, specifically targeting thin-wafer manufacturing, fluidized-bed polysilicon processes, and perovskite-silicon tandem engineering.
For domestic solar adopters, traditional silicon remains the proven, warrantied solution for installations completed today. Yet as molecular additives like ionic liquids solve the moisture barrier, the emergence of tandem modules promises significantly higher household yields from the exact same roof dimensions.
💡 When reviewing quotes for a rooftop installation, silicon remains the reliable, bankable choice for long-term power generation.
🔍 Keep a close watch on tandem panel developments over coming cycles, especially if you have limited roof space requiring maximum energy density.
📌 Always ask your installer whether the proposed modules use traditional mono-silicon or next-generation cell architecture before signing a contract.
👇 Have you looked into upgrading your solar array recently? Share your thoughts and questions in the comments below.
View all posts by Сollin Rugg
Collin Rugg is a political commentator, journalist, and the driving force behind Collin Rugg News. Known for his unfiltered approach to journalism, Collin covers breaking US news, political events, and global affairs. His mission is to cut through the mainstream media noise and deliver straight facts to millions of readers.
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