Friday, 3 July 2026

China's Ministry of Industry and Information Technology is seeking public comment on six draft electronic industry standards that would classify and grade photovoltaic products, pv magazine reported.

The scoring system sorts modules into three tiers. A score of 80 points or above earns Grade 1, a score of 60 to 79 lands a product in Grade 2, and anything below 60 falls to Grade 3.

At the top A+ band, the draft requires 25% efficiency for TOPCon, 24.8% for HJT, and 25.2% for BC products. Huatai Securities put the floor thresholds in the draft at 23.4% for TOPCon, 23.5% for HJT, and 23.9% for BC modules.

Huatai Securities modeled two scenarios for how much capacity the floors could strand. On its baseline case, drawn from current mainstream product efficiencies, roughly 317.5 GW of TOPCon capacity and 10.2 GW of HJT capacity could lose competitiveness, with BC capacity untouched. That baseline puts total exposed capacity near 327.6 GW, which the firm pegged at roughly one-third of industry capacity.

If efficiencies improve, the hit shrinks. Huatai's optimistic case trims the exposure to 143.4 GW of TOPCon and the same 10.2 GW of HJT, a combined 153.6 GW, or about 15% of installed manufacturing capacity.

The standards tie module grading to efficiency floors, so lines running below the thresholds would face retirement or upgrades under the draft. TOPCon carries the heaviest exposure in Huatai's baseline case at about 317.5 GW, while BC capacity would remain unaffected.

Evonik Industries AG has started industrial-scale production of its DURAION anion exchange membranes (AEM) at its site in Marl, North Rhine-Westphalia, according to Hydrogen Fuel News.

The company states that its annual DURAION output could meet demand for electrolysers with over 2.5 GW of capacity. According to Hydrogen Fuel News, the new coating line at Chemiepark Marl is around twenty meters long and can handle polymer films up to one meter wide.

Evonik claims that using electrolysers with DURAION could reduce initial investment costs by about 25% compared to some existing systems.

The company is setting up an AEM application center in Shanghai to support local electrolyser manufacturers. Evonik's New Growth Area AEM within its Innovation Factory is led by Christian Däschlein.

Investors remain largely downbeat on renewables, with policy and fossil-fuel risks outweighing the rewards, according to RenewEconomy.

The cautious stance rests on two drags: shifting policy frameworks and continued competition from fossil generation, which together hold back the returns on offer for wind, solar, and storage.

That mood carries a cost. Developers seeking equity partners and listed renewable platforms draw from the same investor base, so a sustained downbeat view raises the bar new projects must clear and can push out final investment decisions on those exposed to merchant power prices.

A firmer policy footing in major markets, or a shift in fossil-generation margins, would change the calculation, but until then the rewards side stays too thin to offset the risks.

US solar manufacturing capital spending is set to reach roughly USD 2.5 billion by the end of 2026, up from USD 150 million in 2020, with the fastest growth flowing into cell production, according to Terawatt PV Research data reported by pv magazine.

Finlay Colville of Terawatt PV Research tied the shift to a move away from finished-panel imports. "Capital is rebalancing away from historical reliance on finished imports toward localized value chain integration," Colville said.

Much of the near-term cell capacity is coming from Canadian Solar, Trina Solar, and Talon PV, pv magazine reported, with a further 1 GW to 2 GW of cell lines slated for existing module sites through 2028. Terawatt tracks 30 to 40 US manufacturers from the bottom up, and its 2027 forecast leans heavily toward new cell infrastructure.

Corning is holding capital spending low, running about 2 GW of ingot and wafer capacity with no near-term expansion on the books, according to pv magazine.

Section 337 patent litigation brought by First Solar has raised legal and regulatory risk for domestic TOPCon output, according to pv magazine. That risk lands on a domestic technology base split roughly evenly among PERC, TOPCon, and Heterojunction lines.

Navitas Solar will commit about INR 1,500 crore (USD 181.1 million) to a Gujarat site housing a 3.6 GW solar cell plant plus a pilot line for wafers and ingots, pv magazine reported.

The investment carries the module maker into cell, wafer and ingot production, steps it does not currently make in-house.

Construction will proceed in phases, according to pv magazine, with the first phase set to commission in 2027. Civil works spanning more than 92,200 square metres are already running at the site.

Navitas estimates about 1,000 direct jobs, concentrated in manufacturing and research and development, along with indirect employment in logistics and ancillary industries.

The company runs 3 GW of annual module capacity today and sells mono PERC and TOPCon modules from 40 W to 720 W. The new 3.6 GW cell line would push its cell output past its existing module capacity, cutting the need to buy cells from outside suppliers.

Most Indian module producers still source cells abroad, and domestic wafer and ingot output remains scarce. The pilot wafer and ingot line at the Gujarat site would add capacity at a stage of the supply chain India has little of, pv magazine reported.

A Cornell University model finds that covering US lettuce farmland with perovskite tandem solar could offset up to 30.9 million tons of CO2-equivalent a year and save about 8.4 billion m3 of water annually, according to corresponding author Fengqi You.

The farm-to-fork life-cycle work compared perovskite-silicon and perovskite-perovskite tandem cells against conventional silicon panels on lettuce plots. It appeared in Nexus as "Advancing Food-Energy-Water Sustainability with Scalable Perovskite Tandem Agrivoltaics," pv magazine reported.

Mounting density decides the food-versus-power trade. Full-density arrays cut lettuce yield 40% but slash irrigation demand 50%; half-density layouts trim yield 20% and water 30%. Tracking systems keep more of the crop: single-axis tracking loses 12% of yield and 30% of water, and dual-axis tracking loses just 5% of yield while cutting irrigation 15%.

The team ran power conversion efficiencies of 25%, 30%, and 35% for both tandem designs. It paired those with system lifetimes of 2, 5, and 10 years.

That lifetime spread is the crux for developers. Perovskite tandems stack higher-efficiency layers on silicon or on a second perovskite, but the shortest modeled lifespan of 2 years signals the durability gap that still separates lab cells from field-ready arrays at farm scale. The Cornell numbers translate that gap into specific yield, water, and carbon outcomes for a single crop rather than an abstract efficiency claim.

pv magazine reports that six major retailers, among them Currys, Screwfix, B&Q, Wickes, Asda and Amazon, met UK officials at a government roundtable on plug-in solar, a session held ahead of regulation changes expected in summer 2026.

The roundtable ran alongside a fresh government consultation setting out how households could fit plug-in solar panels themselves. Responses are due by June 30.

Existing Great Britain rules require electrical installations to meet British Standards requirements, chiefly BS 7671, a framework written for fixed installations that leaves little room for plug-in generation devices.

The proposal would let households plug solar directly into a standard mains socket, with the connection made without batteries. On that basis, pairing balcony solar with plug-in battery storage falls outside the changes the consultation currently anticipates.

Martin McCluskey, minister for energy consumers, said the panels can be "transformative" for renters and lower-income households.

John Bounphrey, Amazon UK and Ireland country manager, said the company is the largest corporate buyer of carbon-free energy in the UK, having backed more than 40 large scale solar and wind projects to date.

The consultation would shift Great Britain toward a socket-based model for small panels, while leaving plug-in battery storage paired with balcony solar out of scope for now. Retailers that could stock the category attended the roundtable as the government weighs amending BS 7671.