l'Actualité du Solaire

18] Are considered as "small electricity producers" the persons who fulfil the two following cumulative conditions: - operate electricity production facilities whose annual production does not exceed 240 million kilowatt-hours per production site; - since 1 January 2018, consume all their electricity production themselves. The law does not require the operator to be the owner of the installation. Consequently, the fact that he disposes of the installation by means of a lease or a lease credit agreement is not such as to cause him to lose the benefit of the exemption.

19] Since 1 April 2017, persons who operate^a site on which the installed production capacity is less than 1,000 kilowatts are also considered as "small producers" of electricity. The law does not require the operator to be the owner of the installation. Therefore, the fact that the operator disposes of the installation by means of a lease or a lease credit agreement is not such as to cause the benefit of the exemption to be lost. Contrary to the case described in paragraph [18], it is not necessary that all the electricity produced be consumed by the producer. Where this is not the case, the electricity delivered to a third party is either outside the scope of TICFE, where the third party is not a final consumer, or subject to the applicable tariff without the benefit of the tax exemption scheme for small producers, where the third party is a final consumer.

Tecsol of 10 July

- Ensure sufficient visibility for the sector beyond June 2019;

- Establish a common doctrine for all the instructor services;

- Consider the opportunity to regionalise calls for tenders, with a constant budget;

- Modify the criteria for calls for tenders by placing greater emphasis on environmental relevance, in particular the degraded nature of the land on which the power plants are installed;

- Take into account the conditions of extraction of the various materials composing the modules in the environmental rating of calls for tenders.

Tecsol of July 9

A new call for tenders will take place in September. Around fifty self-consumption projects will be selected. They will have an output of 100 to 1,000 kW for a volume of 25 MW. The winners will be able either to consume the production or to develop it with a third party. They will receive a bonus that will be all the higher the greater the proportion of electricity consumed by the project itself and the better the design of the installation is integrated into the electricity grid.

The EPP sets between 65,000 and 100,000 PV sites for self-consumption by 2023 (there are currently about 40,000 in France).

Le Monde de l'Energie of 29 June

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The Ministry of Ecological and Solidarity Transition wants to reach the 450 MW of self-consumption projects planned at the end of these calls for tenders.

The electricity produced by the greenhouse will be used for self-consumption, lighting, dehumidification or the automated irrigation system.

The company intends to embed its flexible film in glass to stiffen it.

The Armor film consists of five layers of organic photosensitive inks, encapsulated between two protective layers. The ASCA film weighs only 450 g / m² and achieves a yield of 4%. The current production capacity is 1 million m² per year.

PV Magazine of 12 July

PV Magazine of 8 July

The world's top 30 engineering-construction companies installed 19 GW in 2018, representing 21% of the market, compared to 23% in 2017.

Internationalisation has emerged as a broader trend among the market-leading EPCs, with seven of the top 15 companies working on projects in more than one region.

PV Magazine of 9 July

Editor's note No list of the main actors is provided in the article. One can especially notice the small size of the players: the first thirty only provide one fifth of the market. Is it because the activity does not lend itself to concentration, or is it because concentration has not yet taken place? The latter is probably the right alternative.

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Seven of the fifteen largest companies outside China (including Sterling and Wilson, ACS, Acciona and BayWa) were active in several geographical regions.

PV Tech of July 9

The government justifies the €0.045 per kWh, as Greece has just agreed a price of €0.062 per kWh. In Spain, solar projects without subsidies have been concluded on the basis of €0.027 per kWh.

PV Magazine of 12 July

Editor's note The auction will set a new benchmark in Europe
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THE PRODUCTS

* The recycling rate for lithium is much higher than in some statistics.

"However, many of these batteries are more than three years old, which is the baseline used by the EU to calculate the collection rate. This means that the material that many believe was lost in landfill or illegal export would have instead been stored in devices longer than expected and then exported legally, either as components of those devices or as batteries for recyclers in Asia with higher yields and an ability to pay higher prices. Batteries are recycled, but not here.

The study found overcapacity in the recycling industry in virtually all markets - including China, where there are more than 30 companies - mainly due to the lack of channels for efficient battery collection. In addition, many batteries escape the statistics because of long product life or reuse in new applications.

There are more than 50 companies worldwide that recycle lithium-ion batteries. They range from small laboratory centres to large-scale factories. Most are located in China, but also in South Korea. Some are still found in the European Union, Japan, Canada and the United States. China and South Korea have become preferred destinations for battery waste, as companies pay much higher prices than European or American companies.

"There are now many recyclers with efficient processes for recycling batteries into new materials. The highest bidder gets the batteries. You can pay more if you reuse batteries rather than recycle them.

Recycling lithium ion batteries would reduce battery manufacturers' dependence on traditional raw material supply chains, which are often exposed to price spikes.

Two recycling methods exist: a°) the smelting process used by the Belgian Umicore and the Franco-Swiss Glencore. This method easily recovers more than 90% of cobalt, nickel and copper from batteries. This method is less suitable for lithium recycling.

b°) Hydro-metallurgical processes are the preferred recycling method in Asia. Copper and aluminium are separated. Recovery rates for the other materials are reported to be very high, reaching 98%. The recovery rate, however, is not the same as purity. In the case of nickel and cobalt, purity is generally very high because the materials are recovered as sulphates. For lithium, the purity requirement is high.

"Most Chinese and South Korean recyclers have the capacity to recover lithium through hydro-metallurgical processes," with pyrolysis being a prerequisite. "Several players are focusing only on lithium, particularly because of the growing number of LFP [lithium iron phosphate] batteries to be processed.

300 studies have been published concerning the separation of materials in used batteries. More than 75% of the studies have focused on hydro-metallurgical processes. 70% were carried out by Chinese or South Korean scientists. Most of these studies focus on the treatment of LCO [lithium cobalt] and NCM [nickel, cobalt, manganese] batteries and only LFP, LMO [lithium ionic manganese oxide] and NCA [lithium nickel cobalt oxide] batteries. The results showed that all active materials, including lithium, could be recycled with high efficiency.

https://www.pv-magazine.com/2019/07/12/lithium-ion-recycling-rates-far-higher-than-some-statistics-suggest/

PV Magazine of 12 July

Editor's note The peddling of a small percentage of lithium recycling shows a lack of knowledge and a lack of curiosity. It is good to learn that lithium is recycled with a high rate of obtaining. The quantity obtained makes it possible to reduce collection in nature.

The article focuses on operational recycling channels in China and South Korea. What is Europe waiting for to create such efficient channels? The two companies mentioned use melting methods that are not adapted to lithium recovery. This indicates that this product is not yet considered strategic and fundamental for the future. What are we waiting for to become aware of this?

Almost half of the water used in Western Europe and the United States is used for energy production. By contrast, in arid regions (the Arab world) as much as 15% of electricity is needed to produce drinking water. By combining the two uses: an electricity generating plant that is a water consumer can produce both electricity and drinking water".

https://www.pv-magazine.com/2019/07/10/clean-water-and-electricity-from-one-system/

PV Magazine of 10 July

Various avenues exist to treat this waste heat, most of which are still at the research stage. One of them is thermoelectric generation, which can produce electricity from temperature differences. The Americans in Utah have built a 5 x 5 mm chip comprising two silicon wafers less than 100 nanometres apart. The chip is held in a vacuum. One of the wafers is heated and the other is cooled, generating electricity from the heat flow. The difficulty is to place the silicon surfaces closer than a thousandth of the thickness of a human hair without touching them. This is the key to how the chip works. The device could direct the electricity generated to the battery of a laptop or similar device, increasing its lifetime by more than 50%. The chip would convert the heat from sunlight into electricity and reduce the temperature of the system, preventing it from degrading.

https://www.pv-magazine.com/2019/07/12/waste-heat-is-not-cool-say-us-scientists/

PV Magazine of 12 July
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This strong pressure on prices is prompting a number of manufacturers to abandon the sector: in January 2019, Kaco New Energy sold its Korean central inverter subsidiary to OCI Power, then sold its photovoltaic inverter business to Siemens in February.

In March 2019, Schneider Electric confirmed the end of its power plant inverter business to reposition itself towards the residential, commercial and industrial segments, and towards its Internet of Things platform, EcoStruxure.

China's Huawei and Sungrow hold 22% and 15% of the market; SMA has 8% of the market; ABB held 5%. This is the result of price competitiveness.

GreenTech Media of 9 July

Editor's note This withdrawal should be read as more than a simple disengagement. It is a turning point in the reshaping of the global inverter industry. For the benefit of China. Keeping its domestic market sheltered from foreign competition, Chinese companies can easily establish low prices abroad both because of their production costs and a systematic desire to conquer markets. How much of this is due to both factors is difficult to determine. What is certain is that if ABB pays the buyer to get rid of its inverter business, it is at a heavy loss. Yet ABB has production plants in India that should make it possible to offer low prices. So, is this the heavy and costly management of a large group? Is it the dumping policy of the Chinese?

French investments in renewable energies decreased by 75% in the first half of the year^to $567 million.

This global decline is evident despite a few large contracts (Al Maktoum IV Solar for $4.2 billion; two offshore wind power plants in Taiwan for $5.7 billion).

PV Magazine of 11 July

Editor's note Photovoltaic installations were few and far between during the first half of the year. The situation is expected to change in the second half of the year.

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The volume of European investment varies from country to country. On the rise : Spain was the star performer with 3.7 billion dollars, up 235 % compared to the same period of the previous year ; the United Kingdom up 35% to $2.5 billion; Sweden up 212% to $2.5 billion; Ukraine up 60% to $1.7 billion. Conversely, investments decreased in the Netherlands with a drop of 2.2%, in Germany with a 42% drop to $2.1 billion, and in France with a 75% drop to $567 million.

In the^first half of the year, global financing of major projects (wind farms and solar farms) fell 24% to $85.6 billion, largely due to China. Financing for small solar systems (less than 1 MW) increased by 32% to $23.7 billion.

Bloomberg NEF of 10 July

Venture capital financing reaches $799 million in the^first half of the year (+50% over 2018)

Public financing on the solar market in the first half of 2019 amounts to $993 million (-20% over 2018)

Debt financing reached $4,200 million in the^first half of the year (+16% over 2018).

In the first half of the year, the announced financing of large-scale projects included $9 billion in financing for 76 projects (compared with $8 billion in 2018).

Mercom Capital of 8 July