Volumes | Solar Business Focus

Volume 7

Cover Story

Electrifying Africa: solar’s next frontier

Despite enjoying rapid economic growth, many parts of Sub-Saharan Africa are inadequately electrified. This makes them ripe for solar deployment, particularly off-grid, says Nilima Choudhury
Volume 6

Cover Story

Southeast Asia steps out of the shadows

With mature solar markets in the West looking uncertain, investors are shifting their attention elsewhere. With some of the most promising new markets, could Southeast Asia be the next solar hotspot asks Nilima Choudhury
Volume 5

Cover Story

Protectionism – a good label for a bad cause

So said economist and Nobel Prize winner Milton Friedman who argued incessantly for free trade. In his 1980 paper The Case for Free Trade, he wrote: “Economists often do disagree, but that has not been true with respect to international trade. There has been virtual unanimity among economists, whatever their ideological position on other issues, that international free trade is in the best interests of trading countries and of the world.”
Volume 4

Cover Story

India's energy supply needs a solar uplift

On July 30 and 31, millions of people across India were left without power in one of the world’s worst blackouts. For two days, hospitals and offices were plunged into darkness and airports were left to use backup diesel power. Two hundred miners were reported to have been stranded in three deep coal shafts in the state of West Bengal, when their electrical elevators stopped working. Seven northern states were affected: stretching from Assam, near China, to the mountains of Himachal Pradesh and the north-western deserts of Rajasthan, to the Gangetic plains in Uttar Pradesh, which has a population larger than Brazil.
Volume 3

Cover Story

Is the Chinese-American relationship beyond repair?

Described as the world’s most important bilateral relationship of the 21st century, the Chinese-American bond has always been complex. The Cold War brought the two countries together. The break-up of the Soviet Union and China’s questionable position on human rights wrested the partnership asunder. China’s position as the United States’ largest foreign creditor, mutual agreement on nuclear power and the ‘war on terror’ repaired the relationship somewhat.
Volume 2

Cover Story

Is the solar economy hanging in the balance?

Between economic fallout, poor business decisions and rash governmental incentive decrees, it’s becoming more and more apparent that the global solar industry is doing an admirable job of pretending that everything is okay. Module manufacturers, equipment suppliers and project developers alike have fallen by the dusty wayside over the past few months, citing supply/ demand issues, tariff adjustments, ASP declines and just plain old betterperforming competition as the reasons for their demise.
Volume 1

Cover Story

The global PV market – predictions for 2012

Predicting what will happen to the global PV market is very nearly an impossible task. Its underlying principles are very similar to the dozens of other electronics mar-kets that IMS Research studies, but the key difference in the PV industry is the very close link to, and ultimate dependence on, government policy. In a few years’ time, the introduction, halting or change (or rumoured change) of a single government’s PV policy will have little effect on the global industry, and the huge swings in demand will be less common and less severe. The reasons for this are clear.