grid congestion

Renewables deployment in the US is at risk of stalling unless distributed interconnection policies are improved to make them more efficient. Fortunately, there are a host of well-developed solutions for many of the major interconnection challenges being seen in the country today, writes Gwen Brown of the Interstate Renewable Energy Council.

Nearly 1TW of solar PV capacity had interconnection queues at the end of 2022, according to a research from Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBNL).

Panellists during last month’s Large Scale Solar Europe event, hosted by PV Tech publisher Solar Media in Lisbon, discussed the issue of grid modernisation in Europe and how it affects the growth of solar PV across several European Union members.

If Portugal wants to bring forward its target to have 9GW of installed capacity by 2026 rather than the end of the decade, it will need to solve one of its main barriers it faces at the moment: permitting issues.

This article will cover both the rooftop and large-scale PV segments in more detail, with the shift from net-metering to net-billing and the stagnancy over pricing in large-scale auctions.

With just 2GW of solar installed at the end of 2019, Poland has seen a meteoric rise towards becoming the third largest solar PV market in Europe in terms of installations.

The considerable expansion of Poland’s solar PV market looks set to continue, with interconnection issues standing as the only impediment to growth, according to panellists speaking at the Solar Finance & Investment Europe 2023 conference.

Power purchase agreements must become a mainstream tool for the development and energy supply of renewables, according to SolarPower Europe.

Solar and energy storage deployment in the US could be accelerated under new proposals from the country’s Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) aimed at addressing significant backlogs in interconnection queues.

Powering electrolysers with renewables generation that would otherwise be curtailed could be an effective strategy for producing green hydrogen in the coming years until the H2 sector benefits from further cost declines, it was suggested during a panel discussion.