Vargas, Northvolt’s parent company, has launched Aira, a new business venture that will sell heat pumps on a monthly fee basis. The venture is in the pilot phase in Italy and will expand to Germany and the United Kingdom later this year. It plans to start production in 2024 at a factory in Wroclaw, Poland.

Italy’s 3Sun, a unit of Enel Green Power, has developed new monofacial PV modules based on n-type heterojunction (HJT) G12 solar cells. The M40 series for rooftop applications has power ratings ranging from 440 W to 480 W and an efficiency of up to 25%.

The Romanian president has passed a new law to shorten the permitting process for solar projects installed on less than 50 hectares of buildable land.

Vaisala, a Finnish environmental measurement specialist, has developed a solar-powered weather station to optimize the performance of solar plants. It provides ongoing measurements of solar irradiation and various weather parameters, such as wind speeds.

Maxeon and Samsung have developed a cloud-to-cloud system to transmit data from Maxeon’s PV panels and batteries to Samsung’s home platform. The heat pump integration enables the use of surplus PV energy to preheat rooms at specific times.

Maxeon Solar Technologies has filed a lawsuit against Tongwei Solar in Germany’s Dusseldorf district court for the alleged infringement of its European patent for shingled solar cell technology.

Alfen has released a new line of battery storage modules with 360 kWh, 540 kWh, or 720 kWh of capacity. The fully integrated systems are developed for events, festivals, construction sites, maritime applications, and EV charging hubs.

Swiss startup Turn2Sun has developed a PV mounting structure with end-of-life wind turbine blades. It has installed the structure at an altitude of 2,500 meters in the Grisons region of Switzerland, with 16 bifacial 430 W solar modules.

The Serbian authorities have launched the nation’s first renewable energy auction, with 50 MW of PV and 400 MW of wind power. The projects will be supported through contracts for difference for 15 years.

The European Solar Test Installation (ESTI) has confirmed the results of Longi’s new perovskite/silicon tandem solar cell. It is currently the second-highest efficiency record in the world for a perovskite/silicon tandem cell.