Floating solar specialists Ocean Sun and Inseanergy have been involved in a patent dispute over Ocean Sun’s floating solar structure since August 2022. The companies have now announced a settlement, with a “positive result” for both parties.

Italy-based Rhoss has developed a cascaded air-source heat pump that uses propane (R290) as the refrigerant. It can produce between 47.4 kW and 190.5 kW of heat and domestic hot water to a temperature of up to 75 C.

Infinity Turbine has developed a new system that uses the electricity stored in a saltwater redox flow battery to produce clean drinking water from seawater. It said the technology can be used by cruise ships and cargo ships.

Trane has released a rooftop air-to-air heat pump that can produce between 14.5 kW and 37.4 kW of heat and between 16.5 kW and 38.4 kW of cooling. The new device can purportedly be adapted to cold-climate applications by adding complementary heating sources such as electric heaters or hot water coils.

China’s Deye has developed a new lithium iron phosphate battery system with a nominal voltage of 51.2 V. It says that up to 32 modules with a capacity of 6.14 kWh can be stacked and connected in parallel for a total capacity of 196.48 kWh.

South Korean researchers have developed a heat trading system including a ground-source heat pump, solar thermal collectors, a fuel-cell system, and two heat storage tanks for district heating at hours of peak solar production.

The Swiss government introduced measures to fast-track permitting and construction of alpine PV in October 2022. It is set to announce a new incentive scheme for these installations in April 2023. pv magazine spoke with Lionel Bloch, renewable energy project manager at Swiss engineering firm Planair, about the new provisions.

Brazilian scientists have calculated the potential for floating solar generation in Brazil. The results show an installed potential of 43 GW for all of Brazil, with the state of Minas Gerais leading with 6 GW, followed by Bahia with 4.59 GW, and Sao Paulo with 3.87 GW.

SolarPower Europe says in a new report that households in Germany, Spain, and Italy can more than triple their savings by pairing PV with heat pumps. It said this combination helped families to save between 62% and 84% on their annual energy bills in 2022.

Fraunhofer ISE has presented the results of retrofit heat pump installations in multi-family homes in Germany. One demonstrator featured rooftop solar PV and a multi-source heat pump developed in partnership with Viessmann. It uses air and geothermal as heat sources.