October 2023

Octopus Investments Australia, a subsidiary of UK-based Octopus Group, has purchased the largest battery installation in the Australian state of Queensland – the 500 MW/1 GWh Blackstone project – just outside of Brisbane.

Sri Lanka’s Ministry of Power and Energy is now welcoming expressions of interest for the development of ground-mounted or floating solar PV projects – ranging from 1 MW to 5 MW – at three substations in the country. Selected developers will secure a 20-year power purchase agreement.

India needs to expand its PV capacity to achieve its 2027 energy target of 186 GW. As of March 31, 2023, the country had already installed 66.7 GW of solar, including an additional 12.9 GW added during the 2023 fiscal year.

US-based Maxar Technologies used satellite imagery imagery with resolution of 31 cm to 15.5 cm to identify rooftop PV systems in southern Germany. The company claims its new approach was able to identify 97.8% of the solar arrays with high confidence.

APsystems has developed an AC-coupled residential battery charger, offering the ability to connect up to four batteries in parallel, for up to 20 kWh of storage capacity.

The first tender under the European Union’s new €40 million ($41.8 million) multilateral solar scheme – targeting 5 MW to 100 MW projects based in Finland and providing energy to Luxembourg – has been ‘oversubscribed’ with bids ‘significantly exceeding target volumes’, the European Commission’s Directorate-General for Energy recently announced.

In the last week of September, European electricity market prices rose from the previous week. For a majority of prices the weekly average was above €100/MWh and, in several markets, some hourly prices were above €200/MWh. The rise in gas prices, the decrease in wind energy production and higher demand favored this behavior. Brent futures continued to rise, reaching their highest level since November 2022 on September 27.

PV module prices have fallen since the start of the pandemic in 2020, reaching a global two-year low in April 2023, according to the US Energy Information Administration (EIA). In the first two months of this year, average PV module prices in the United States stood at $0.36/W (DC), down 11% on a quarterly basis.

The scientists built the device by depositing multiple metal nanofilms on both sides using plasma-enhanced chemical vapor deposition. The cell achieved an open-circuit voltage of 684 mV, a short-circuit current density of 38.2 mA/cm2 and a fill factor of 80.8%.

Mattiq says it is evaluating “millions of combinations” of different alternatives to iridium for PEM electrolysis, while Hystar, Air Liquide, and Trillium Energy Solutions have revealed plans for the North American hydrogen market.