Tag Archives: solar demand

Major Solar Panel Manufacturers Increase Production As Polysilicon Prices Fall

Clean Energy, Climate Change, Solar Equipment,

New manufacturing capacity in the polysilicon wafer market has helped boost the production of solar panels at three major Chinese manufacturers.

Several new polysilicon production factories have come online, resulting in a major decline in the price of polysilicon wafers. Those wafers are the building blocks for solar panels, being pieced together into a complete module.

This is great news for the solar industry as a whole, for customers looking to buy panels in the next few months, and for fighting climate change worldwide.

Bloomberg reports:

Several big solar-panel makers are ramping up production in a boon to clean energy. A key reason: the collapse of material costs that had been elevated for more than a year.

Three leading Chinese module manufacturers are bumping up January output forecasts, according to Shanghai Metals Market, which didn’t identify its sources. Promising near-term demand is another factor driving the output boost.

The world is racing to fight climate change, but accessing solar panels has been a challenge in some markets including the US. A surge of cheap panels would help countries reduce their dependence on fossil fuels and potentially lower power prices.

Solar demand has been growing for several years, but manufacturers were hamstrung in 2021 and 2022 by a rare stretch of increasing material costs for polysilicon — a key material for most panels. 

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2023-01-05/big-solar-panel-manufacturers-boosting-production-as-costs-fall

You can read the full story at Bloomberg.com

Wind And Solar Could Provide More Energy To The Grid In 2023 Than Coal And Nuclear

Clean Energy, Climate Change, Solar Energy, , , ,

If the current pace of growth of industrial-scale renewable energy projects coming online continues, wind, solar, biomass and other forms of renewable energy could surpass coal and nuclear in the amount of energy supplied to the grid in 2023.

A recently released report by the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA), estimated that renewable energy provided 22.6% of U.S. electricity over the first 10 months of 2022, outpacing both coal and nuclear.

The EIA figures indicate that solar output surged by 22.6% for the first 10 months of 2022, as compared to the previous year. In October, solar energy output was an impressive 31.2% greater than the year before.

Solar demand is skyrocketing, and forecasts project significant growth rates for many months to come.

EcoWatch reports:

A new analysis of federal data shows that wind and solar alone could generate more electricity in the United States than nuclear and coal over the coming year, critical progress toward reducing the country’s reliance on dirty energy.

The SUN DAY Campaign, a nonprofit that promotes sustainable energy development, highlighted a recently released U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) review finding that renewable sources as a whole—including solar, wind, biomass, and others—provided 22.6% of U.S. electricity over the first 10 months of 2022, a pace set to beat the agency’s projection for the full year.

“Taken together, during the first ten months of 2022, renewable energy sources comfortably out-produced both coal and nuclear power by 16.62% and 27.39% respectively,” the SUN DAY Campaign noted Tuesday. “However, natural gas continues to dominate with a 39.4% share of total generation.”

The new EIA figures show that electricity output from solar alone jumped by more than 26% in the first 10 months of last year. In just October, the SUN DAY Campaign observed, “solar’s output was 31.68% greater than a year earlier, a rate of growth that strongly eclipsed that of every other energy source.”

Ken Bossong, the campaign’s executive director, said that “as we begin 2023, it seems very likely that renewables will provide nearly a quarter—if not more—of the nation’s electricity during the coming year.”

https://www.ecowatch.com/wind-solar-outpace-nuclear-coal.html

You can read the full story at Ecowatch.com.