Commentary

Taiwan is an island that highly relies on import energy to sustain the power supply of the country.

India is the fourth largest electricity network in the world with a gross generation capacity of 211 GW. The country which is growing at an average GDP growth rate of 6% plans to add 88,000 MW by the end of the current five-year plan (2012-2017).

The UAE continues to enjoy double digit real annual GDP growth rates, nearly of 10 percent, but facing a challenging task to quench the thirst of power demand.

Doing nothing is not an option.

Obtaining a Power Purchase Agreement (“PPA”) with a highly rated, financially strong electric utility is one of the key success factors for the financing of a growing pipeline of waste-to-energy (“WTE”) plants across India.

Oversupply increased in 2012 as global production capacity rose 10 GW while demand rose less than 3 GW as Chinese manufacturers, such as Yingli, which added 600 MW, and Trina, which added 500 MW of capacity in 2012, continue to increase capacity.

Discussions and dialogues between peers and professionals, at times, centre around the question:

The deployment of PV has seen a dramatic increase in the last decade and is poised to take over wind in this decade as wind reaches its “easy-to-reach” potential and solar is barely starting to penetrate the generation mix worldwide.

A free market where the present lowest cost fuel solution wins. per se and per definition.

Doing nothing is not an option.

TSMC recently announced a 1.09 m2 champion copper indium gallium diselenide (CIGS) module with a 15.1% total area efficiency. The module was produced using the current equipment at the company’s 100 MW capacity facility in Taiwan with its process licensed from Stion. The company claims a world record for monolithic thin-film modules, although Miasolé (purchased by Hanergy) demonstrated a 15.5% aperture area efficient 1.68 m2 discretely integrated (non-monolithic) flexible module.

Smart metering and Smart grid in electricity sector recently have attracted much attention to improve the performance of power utilities. Many countries in the West including USA, Canada and within the EU are already involved in smart metering on pilot projects or in selective roll out for specific urban areas.

The months of November and December saw a huge influx of FIT applications submitted to METI and the respective Utility Companies. Reason behind was the fact that the first revision of the current FIT is due by end of March 2013, after which the new tariffs will become effective from April onward. Considering an application period around 3 months, makes end of December a cutoff date to secure the current rates.

Many power generation facilities have been constructed or are under development in Asia. Thus, many plant personnel will encounter issues related to water/steam chemistry.

Before 2008, encapsulant suppliers from Germany, the U.S., and Japan, such as STR Solar, Mitsui Chemicals, Bridgestone, and Solutia (Etimex), were the dominant companies producing EVA film – taking 60% of the global market share. However, Chinese encapsulant suppliers have steadily increased their market share with players like Hangzhou First PV Material, exceeding Bridgestone and Solutia, to become one of the top three suppliers in 2008.

The October 2012 All India Seminar On Clean Energy & Energy Conservation, Nagpur, seemed more developed and urgent than in 2008. Exemplified in that conference and after the 2012 blackouts, the seminar focused on the fact that conservation, only, will not offset energy requirements. Whole systems replacement, or augmentation, is required and coincides with integrating clean energy sources. Actionable methods and wares for increasing renewable energy efficiency were directly addressed. Intriguing descriptions of solar power, wind energy, and control topologies were prominent. Discussions rounded out on using intelligent grids to allocate loads of existing or new utilities.