A new report by IEA PVPS Task 18 provides a blueprint guide on how to conduct feasibility studies for off-grid and edge-of-grid power systems. The optimal system size and specifications vary depending on the client’s priorities. The desired project outcomes can be identified using pure financial analysis (NPV, IRR) or additionally taking environmental performance into account.

A flat year for solar installation numbers in Japan could be seen as positive in a nation switching to new PV business models, writes Izumi Kaizuka, director of research for Japanese solar consultancy RTS Corp.

Gerard Reid, co-founder of corporate finance advisory Alexa Capital, considers whether the EU is up to the task of dealing with the twin threats of the energy crisis and the pull of a revitalized US clean power industry.

With electric vehicle (EV) adoption set to turbocharge demand for rare earth elements in Canada and the US this decade, attempts are being made to loosen the region’s dependence on China for the sourcing and processing of such critically important energy transition materials.

Pumped hydro energy storage can be readily scaled to any required storage capacity at a known and affordable cost.

The off-grid solar sector has shown resilience in the face of pandemic-related challenges, with 70 million people gaining access to electricity from early 2020 to the end of 2021. However, the ability to pay for solar energy kits has taken a hit.

The African Development Bank has announced that European and US donors will provide $20 million of concessional loans to support pay-as-you-go solar companies in sub-Saharan Africa.

The International Renewable Energy Agency’s latest annual report on the progress towards UN sustainable development goal seven estimates 670 million people will still lack electricity in 2030, and more than 2 billion will be reliant on unhealthy, polluting cooking methods.

The European Commission wants to introduce legislation to back semiconductor research and to address the immediate problem of supply chain bottlenecks by drumming up more than €43 billion, with member states and the private sector expected to contribute.

The input costs of the two biggest contributors to solar plant development expense have gone through the roof since the world began to come out of Covid-19 lockdowns, to leave project developers with some difficult choices.

Energy Systems Catapult has released interim data from air-source heat pump field monitoring in the United Kingdom between November 2020 and August 2022. Figures show that heat pumps are three times more efficient than gas boilers and that their median coefficient of performance (COP) on cold days is 2.44, compared to 2.80 year round.

China-based module manufacturer Huonen Solar said it wants to build a panel manufacturing facility in Orangeburg, South Carolina. The factory will produce modules for the US market.

Germany’s AEG is selling two versions of its new high-voltage residential batteries, with nominal capacities of 10 kWh and 15 kWh. They come with a 10-year warranty and reportedly have a lifecycle of more than 6,000 cycles.

India installed 7.7 GW of cumulative, open-access solar capacity by Dec. 31, 2022, following record annual additions of 2.5 GW.

The Solar Energy Industries Association’s (SEIA) latest white paper on solar and storage manufacturing includes an interactive map. It shows that momentum has started to build for a transformational expansion of domestic solar and storage manufacturing.

Iberdrola is using a springer spaniel in a solar park to smell electrical problems that could lead to power cuts. It is also using a robotic dog to detect and analyze faults in substations.

Dan French, executive producer of the Solar Farm Summit, told pv magazine USA that more than 500 farmers, manufacturers, and community solar developers likely attended the first US agrivoltaics conference in Chicago last week.

The European Commission says it will set up the new European Hydrogen Bank by the end of this year, with additional plans to hand out 10-year contracts in a new hydrogen auction. Linde Engineering, meanwhile, is teaming up with several other companies to test solid oxide electrolyzer cells (SOEC) and ammonia cracking technology.

After 800 Sungrow batteries were impacted by an outage, the Chinese manufacturer informed its local German partners about the solution to the problem. However, it remains unclear how quickly the affected battery management systems can be replaced.

More and more people want to invest in PV arrays and battery storage systems. However, there are a number of myths that could lead to disappointment among customers, according to one German consumer association.

Researchers in Singapore have developed a perovskite solar cell via a new method to synthesize the capping without using lead. The cell is capped with a zinc-based compound and reportedly has a conversion efficiency of 24.1%.

The search for ever higher conversion efficiency has driven solar researchers to focus on back-contact cell approaches, and efforts to devise more cost-effective manufacturing are bringing technologies such as interdigitated back contact (IBC) solar into the mainstream, as Mark Hutchins reports.

Finnish technology company Intelligent Control Systems has conceived a light redirecting film that purportedly reduces energy losses in the edge area of heterojunction solar cells. It claims the film may increase the power conversion efficiency of a heterojunction module by up to 0.75%.

Chinese researchers fabricated a kesterite PV device using a transparent fluorine-doped tin oxide (FTO) substrate instead of substrates based on opaque Mo-coated soda lime glass. The cell has an open-circuit voltage of 0.522 V, a short-circuit current of 33.0 mA cm−2, and a fill factor of 68.55%.

Mitsubishi Electric has developed an air-source heat pump that uses propane (R290) as the refrigerant. It can produce between 5 kW and 8.5 kW of heat and domestic hot water to a temperature of up to 75 C.

Huasun has switched on the manufacturing lines for its new heterojunction module factory in China’s Anhui province.

Belgium-based Belinus says its new PV modules feature a nominal power rating of 420 W and a power conversion efficiency of 20.1%. It says plans are also in place to build a 500 MW solar panel factory at an unspecified Belgian site.

Zendure’s SolarFlow batteries have capacities of 960 Wh and can be stacked up to 3,849 Wh. The US manufacturer wants to begin selling the plug-and-play systems in April.

Spain’s Acciona Energia is using fiberglass from the blades of used wind turbines to make the torsion beams of solar trackers. It is using the tech as part of a pilot project in Badajoz, Spain.

CEA-INES researchers and Enel have developed a new solar cell with an active area of 9 cm² and an open-circuit voltage above 1,880 mV. Their results improve on the 25.8% efficiency they achieved for the same kind of cell in December 2022.

Synergy, a utility owned by the Western Australian government, has revealed plans to build a new 200 MW/800 MWh battery energy storage system in the city of Kwinana, in order to support the state’s main grid and enable the uptake of more renewables.

York Minster, one of the largest cathedrals in Northern Europe, has secured approval to install 199 solar modules on its rooftop. The system will generate at least 75,000 kWh per year and will be paired with batteries.

The “Solar Box” mobile power plant is a container consisting of solar modules, a battery storage system, and a hydrogen storage system. According to Austria’s Alternative Energy Projects (AEP), the system starts at 94 kW and can be scaled up to more than 5 MW.

In its bid to develop fuel cells for aircraft with over 100 seats within 24 months, ZeroAvia has revealed record-breaking hydrogen fuel cell performance tests. Meanwhile, Universal Hydrogen and local partners are teaming up to build hydrogen infrastructures for aviation in Japan amid a push towards hydrogen infrastructure and mobility.

Kenya’s government plans to build 137 solar minigrids across remote locations in the East African country. The project received $150 million in funding from the World Bank.