In its first monthly column for pv magazine, the International Electrotechnical Commission (IEC) explains how a team of its experts is currently working on the definition of new standards for VIPV systems.
Tariffs on solar glass harm the European solar industry. This problem can now be easily solved without jeopardizing the European solar glass production.
In another article of a series, Women in Solar Europe (WiSEu) gives voice to Claire Gardner, Marketing Manager Europe at Chinese inverter manufacturer Solis. She tells how she had to deal with her own insecurities rather than with a women-hostile environment at the beginning of her career in the renewable energy industry.
In a new weekly update for pv magazine, Solcast, a DNV company, reports that warm sea surface temperatures and disturbances increased onshore moisture along China’s southern coast, which in turn increased solar irradiance by 5-15% on long term averages.
In a new weekly update for pv magazine, OPIS, a Dow Jones company, offers bite-sized analysis on solar PV module supply and price trends.
Luxembourg-based Ardagh Group is installing solar PV at several of its packaging manufacturing sites in the United Kingdom and Europe. The latest is a 1.75 MW rooftop system installed at a glass packaging facility in Irvine, Scotland.
The German authorities have granted 2.23 GW in a utility-scale solar tender, with bids ranging from €0.0362 ($0.039)/kWh to €0.0549/kWh, oversubscribed to 4.1 GW.
The Asian Development Bank (ADB) says a new 100 MW solar project in Bangladesh will be the country’s first private sector utility-scale PV facility to secure ADB support.
Norwegian Ship Design Co. has agreed to help build what it claims will be the two largest hydrogen ships in the world, while Norwegian Hydrogen has announced plans to team up with Australia’s Provaris Energy on hydrogen export opportunities.
Alberto Boretti was a senior research professor at Prince Mohammad Bin Fahd University in 2021 when he first started discussing the idea of a hydrogen city in Al Khobar, Saudi Arabia. The New Zealand-based independent tells pv magazine that it is now commercially feasible, as the city’s 200 MW of energy demand would necessitate 1 GW to 1.3 GW of solar and wind capacity, 509 MW to 997 MW of electrolysis capacity, and 145,000 MWh of hydrogen storage capacity.
Scientists led by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) have designed a new PV-powered desalination system based on the time-variant electrodialysis reversal (EDR) technology. The proposed system reportedly achieves lower levelized cost of water than conventional solar-powered desalination techs.
Urbasolar has commissioned the last section of a 36.1 MW solar carport at Disneyland Paris. The facility, which covers 20 hectares of parking space, will sell all of the electricity, with no self-consumption.
The government of the Spanish autonomous region of Catalonia has outlined new requirements to authorize agrivoltaic power generation on agricultural land.
The first stage of Acen Australia’s planned 720 MW New England Solar Farm in Australia is home to more than 6,000 sheep, which graze beneath the panels in a proof-of-concept agrivoltaics project.
The Aswan High Dam Reservoir is one of the world’s largest water reservoir and suffers from high water evaporation rates due to the region’s very hot and dry climate. Floating PV installations may be a remedy, while also offering a good match for hydropower generation.
An international research team has developed a new type of perovskite solar cell by using 4-phenyl thiosemicarbazide (4PTSC) as a precursor additive. The device showed an improved open-circuit voltage and “exceptional” long-term stability.
A team from Germany’s Fraunhofer Institute for Solar Energy Systems has reduced silver consumption in the fabrication of PERC solar cells by screen-printing ultra-fine metallization lines measuring just 14 μm. The resulting solar cell offered remarkable efficiency levels, which were confirmed by Fraunhofer ISE CalLab.
Arctech says it plans to open a 3 GW tracker factory in Saudi Arabia. The tracker manufacturer says the facility in Jeddah will be designed to reach up to 10 GW of capacity.
Researchers at the Delft University of Technology have fabricated an interdigitated back contact and heterojunction solar cell that uses a thin full-area molybdenum oxide layer as a blanket layer. The device reportedly ensures well-passivated gaps between electron and hole collecting regions.
A group of scientists from the Germany’s Fraunhofer ISE has proposed a new metric to assess the performance of shingled solar panels. They also applied the so-called passivated edge technology (PET) to experimental shingled modules and found it can increase their pseudo fill factor without compromising their inteconnection quality.
The module manufacturing facility is located in Dresden, eastern Germany, and has an annual capacity of 300 MW.
Swedish thin film solar manufacturer Midsummer has selected a factory in southeastern Sweden to develop its new solar module production facility, which will produce copper indium gallium selenide (CIGS) solar cells for the European market.
Cordier, a winery in Bordeaux, France, is building solar carports at two of its facilities in southern France. The two PV arrays will be tied to 20 EV charging stations.
Bluebird Solar, a PV module manufacturer in India, recently unveiled its 600 Wp tunnel oxide passivated contact (TOPCon) dual-glass bifacial solar panels. They offer a power conversion efficiency of 23.25%.
Researchers at the University of New South Wales claim to have identified three TOPCon panel failure types that are absent in PERC products. They explained that these failures may occur when the modules are exposed to high humidity and contaminants before encapsulation.
The Middle East Solar Industry Association’s (MESIA) latest Solar Outlook Report says that despite rapid growth in solar deployment across the Middle East and North Africa, the area’s power mix is still dominated by fossil fuels. It says growth will be led by utility-scale solar, but it calls for a balanced approach involving distributed energy projects.
The Hungarian government has earmarked HUF 62 billion ($169 million) for grid-scale energy storage projects in a bid to facilitate further deployment of renewable energy sources.
Chinese inverter manufacturer Sungrow shipped 130 GW of inverters last year, reaching a profit of $1.3 billion.
Sales of electric three-wheelers (e-3W) in India surpassed 580,000 units in 2023, compared to 320,000 vehicles sold in China, according to the International Energy Agency (IEA).
As the Australian authorities launch rolling tenders for 32 GW of renewables and storage by 2030, it has become clear that some communities, including locals around pv magazine reporter Bella Peacock’s hometown, have not been brought onside. Heated debate on social media and a frenzy stoked by concerns about the impact on the natural environment are throwing up hurdles for renewables development.
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