2019

The Indian developer will hold a 51% stake in the venture, with Seoul-based GS E&C taking the remainder. The capacity was awarded under Solar Energy Corp. of India’s tranche-IV auction earlier this year.

The European Commission has approved state aid for the so-called European Battery Alliance to promote the development of a lithium-ion battery supply chain in the European Union.

Italian gas and oil producer Eni has followed the recent commissioning of a 10 MW solar+storage project in Pakistan with the completion of a similar off-grid installation at an oil field in Tunisia. The power plant was built in partnership with Tunisian state-owned oil company Entreprise Tunisienne d’Activités Pétrolières

The Australian Renewable Energy Agency has announced AUD 15 million ($10.3 million) in research funding to investigate end-of-life issues for PV modules. Ultimately it is hoped that the research will increase solar PV efficiency while lowering costs.

NREL has published a paper showing an experimental solar cell, with a unique technique for wiring two separate solar cells into one, that increased the cell’s efficiency by 4%. The document also offers a respectable review of other technologies being developed.

An international research team has developed a new approach for solar power forecasting that combines neural networks and pattern sequences for the first time. The performance of the new Pattern Sequence Neural Network (PSNN) was tested on an Australian data set that includes information from two years of forecasts. It can be used with different clustering and cluster-sequence extraction algorithms, and can be applied to multiple related time sequences

As part of a series of interviews on renewable energy and geopolitics, Indra Overland – head of the Center for Energy Research at the Norwegian Institute for International Affairs – explains why some countries will take the lead in the energy transition. All of the countries in Africa, with the exception of a few oil exporters, will be part of the solar revolution, he said, noting the recent release of the GeGaLo Index. He also looks at why big economies such as the United States, Germany, China and Australia are not geopolitically well-situated for the energy transition, and why others, such as Japan, France and Spain, are positioned more favorably. In addition, Overland discusses why it is particularly important that nations under strong political pressure grasp the benefits of clean energy.

Scientists from Israel have used nanowires to detach particles from the surfaces of solar panels. The proposed microscopic self-cleaning technology is said to raise the efficiency of particle removal with hydrophobicity.

Solaredge wants to enable households have a higher solar self-consumption with its new product. The Israeli PV company’s solution can now be ordered in Germany, Austria, and Switzerland.

As the European Commission prepares its strategy for a European Green Deal, it is important to understand how solar can deliver on ambitious climate targets.