In a new weekly update for pv magazine, Solcast, a DNV company, reports that dust storms and slear skies led to contrasting March Solar Performance in West Asia. The Arabian Peninsula experienced humid winds and dust storms that reduced solar irradiance to 90% of typical levels for the month.

In another article of a series on gender equality, Women in Solar Europe (WiSEu) gives voice Mariyana Yaneva, Vice Chair at the Association for production, storage and trading with electricity (APSTE). She explains that policies allowing childcare needs to be met but not placing the burden of care explicitly on women, increase the chances that women can build the business acumen and professional contacts necessary to qualify for a corporate board.

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.

Dismissed by many in the solar industry as an overly-complex, outdated technology, concentrated solar power (CSP) is set for a comeback thanks to a scaled-down, modular approach.

Power Panel offers a PV and thermal storage solution that combines simple, safe and easy to manage hot water with advanced thermoplastic technology and architecture.

Australia’s “largest-ever” tender for renewable energy will open in May, with the federal government targeting 6 GW of new solar and wind projects.

German researchers are studying using an overhead solar PV system, designed to be removable and reusable, as a sunshade for young fir trees. The pilot, located at a quartz sand excavation site, will be monitored to compare growth and water consumption with an adjacent unshaded tree plot.

Research indicates that most neighbors of solar power facilities in the United States maintain positive attitudes toward these plants until they exceed 100 MW in capacity, or approximately 400 acres.

The new heat pumps use R-454B as a refrigerant and are specifically designed to be matched with Johnson Controls’ residential gas furnaces. Their size ranges from 1.5 tons to 5 tons and their coefficient of performance (COP) spans between 3.24 and 3.40, according to the manufacturer.

Greece has grand plans for an interconnector network that runs from the Middle East through to the heart of Europe. pv magazine examines the latest developments on the road to a Mediterranean super grid and what it might mean for the regions involved.

Energy consultancy LevelTen says that solar power purchase agreement (PPA) prices fell 5.9% in the first quarter of 2024, with decreases recorded in all analyzed countries except for Romania. It attributes the decline to lower wholesale electricity prices and a fall in solar module prices.

The International Energy Agency (IEA) Photovoltaic Power Systems Programme (PVPS) has published a wide-reaching snapshot of the global PV market, covering installations, manufacturing, policy trends, and grid integration.

UV Energy has developed a PV system that can be used in parking lots and on other surfaces. It claims that the arrays can be deployed within time frames of three to six weeks.

Spain’s Soltec has developed a new dual-row, single-axis tracker with a tracking range of up to 60 degrees, offering compatibility with 60-cell, 72-cell and 78-cell modules.

EcoFlow has launched a new air-to-water heat pump for residential applications. The new product, equipped with R290 refrigerant, is available in 9 kW and 20 kW versions. The US-headquartered manufacturer has also developed a new smart immersion heater, which uses surplus solar energy to heat up water. It is compatible with all available rooftop PV systems.

An Austrian team develped a model to optimize lamination parameters and to flag critical, insufficiently crosslinked and inconsistent encapsulant laminations. It could be particularly suitable for the production of double-glass solar panels.

The Dutch government has earmarked €100 million ($106.7 million) of subsidies for the deployment of battery storage alongside PV projects. The funds are part of a €416 million subsidy program announced last year to alleviate grid congestion.

AleaSoft and SolarPower Europe inform pv magazine that negative energy prices in Europe are related to the pandemic, low demand, insufficient storage solutions, and inadequate energy planning. They say this situation will likely continue into the summer.

ArcActive, a New Zealand-based battery tech specialist, plans to set up a factory in Australia within 18 months. It says the facility will be able to produce 30,000 lead acid-based residential energy storage systems per year.

An international team has demonstrated a perovskite solar cell relying on inorganic calcium nitrogen iodide (Ca3NI3) perovskite and has found this absorber material offers advantages such as tunable bandgap and resistance to heat. The device achieved a fill factor of 81.68%.

Beijian Energy says it will build a new factory to make heterojunction (HJT) solar cells and panels. The facility in Liaoning province will produce 4 GW of cells and 3 GW of PV modules.

Systovi has gone into liquidation, as the commercial court in Nantes, France, has issued an order to do so, citing the solar panel manufacturer’s failure to find new investors, despite its 80 MW of panel manufacturing capacity.

A Chinese research group has sought to understand the relative performance of two weather prediction techniques based on ensemble modeling for solar energy forecasts. The scientists applied the two methods in combination with three classical post-processing methods.

Researchers in China have compared the performance of catenary and taut mooring systems for offshore floating PV systems. They found that the taut system offers a higher degree of reliability in shallow water environments with severe tidal variations.

Scientists in the Netherlands conducted meta-analysis on the growth of strawberries, blueberries, blackberries and blackcurrants under different levels of shade generated by elevated agrivoltaic systems. They found that, although classified as shade-benefitting in previous literature, not all berries are equally profiting from the presence of the photovoltaic panels.

Jaguar Land Rover (JLR) and Allye Energy have agreed to collaborate on a 270 kWh portable battery energy storage system (BESS) built with second-life Range Rover batteries. The system, which is set to become the first commercially available BESS with JLR battery packs, can fully charge up to nine Range Rover PHEV vehicles at once.

Nhoa Energy, an Italian developer, has commissioned a battery energy storage project for Taiwan Cement Group in Yilan county, Taiwan, with a capacity exceeding 120 MWh.

Renewables developer Vast Solar has signed a key engineering contract as it pushes toward construction of a 30 MW/288 MWh thermal concentrated solar power (CSP) plant with more than eight hours of energy storage capacity near Port Augusta, South Australia.

Researchers in India have simulated a 4 kW solar power-based hybrid electric vehicle (EV) charging station using a three-stage charging strategy and found that the station is capable of charging 10–12 EVs with 48 V 30 Ah lithium-ion batteries.

Vale and Central South University have launched a joint laboratory for low-carbon and hydrogen metallurgy in Changsha, in China’s Hunan province, while Nippon Steel has secured approval to acquire U.S. Steel.