...
The African continent, which has the most potential to benefit from solar power, has been slow to adopt the technology, but is now embracing its possibilities. While investment in small domestic installation continues, there has been a big increase in utilities creating large solar farms.
World market
These are the main trends outlined in a detailed PV Status Report for 2014, released by the European Union. The report, which assesses the state of the world market and its growth in individual countries, says that despite the fact that subsidies for fossil fuels still massively exceed those for renewable, it is wind and solar power industries that will continue to grow and the price will come down.
...
Battery storage
...
Investments in 2013 were used for installing 87 gigawatts (GW) of new clean energy generation capacity, bringing the total to 735 GW, and thus capable of producing more than 1700 terawatt hours (TWh) of electricity − or 70 % of the electricity generated by nuclear power plants worldwide.
Vast resources
The report says: “Despite Africa’s vast solar resources and the fact that in large areas the same photovoltaic panel can produce on average twice as much electricity in Africa than in Central Europe, there has been only limited use of solar photovoltaic electricity generation up until now.”
But according to the latest study, solar PV electricity is now the cheapest electricity option for more than one-third of the African population.
Until recently, the main application of PV systems in Africa was in small solar home systems. Since 2012, however, major policy changes have occurred, and a large number of utility-scale PV projects are now in the planning stage.
Overall, the (documented) capacity of installed PV systems in Africa had risen to more than 600 MW by the end of 2013 − a tenfold increase compared with 2008. In 2014, the installed capacity is expected to more than double.
Read more at Asia Powers into the Forefront of Solar Revolution
No comments:
Post a Comment