IEA PVPS is about to start a new format for expert engagement: an Action Group on Agrovoltaics; a collaborative effort to harness the synergy between agriculture and solar energy generation. Through international cooperation and interdisciplinary engagement, the group aims to unlock the potential of agrivoltaics, optimizing land use efficiency, enhancing agricultural resilience to climate change, and fostering social consensus towards solar energy development.

Global solar demand will continue to grow in 2024 with module demand likely to reach 492 GW to 538 GW. InfoLink predicts that demand growth will begin to slow. Amy Fang, a senior analyst at InfoLink, takes a look at module demand and supply chain inventories in a market still affected by oversupply.

In a new monthly column for pv magazine, the International Solar Energy Society (ISES) explains how solar and wind are strongly dominating powerplant construction, whereas construction of all other generation technologies is both small and stagnant.

In another article of a series, Women in Solar Europe (WiSEu) gives voice to Zoraida Bejarano, the Head of Talent Management at NextEnergy Group. She says the underrepresentation of women in recruitment processes in the solar energy industry complicates efforts to showcase inclusivity and address unconscious biases.

In a new weekly update for pv magazine, Solcast, a DNV company, reports that, despite record rainfall in the middle of April, areas of the Arabian Peninsula still saw above-average irradiance through April, with the UAE and parts of Saudi Arabia seeing irradiance about 5% above normal.

Adnoc has delivered the world’s first certified bulk commercial shipment of low-carbon ammonia to a client in Japan, while Plug Power has agreed to supply a 3 GW electrolyzer in Australia.

The China Nonferrous Metals Industry Association (CNMIA) says that the average price of n-type polysilicon fell by 5% to 6% this week.

A research paper investigating what encourages or hinders the adoption of solar energy by Saudi consumers has called on the Saudi Arabian government to concentrate on boosting consumer knowledge of renewable energy.

In a new weekly update for pv magazine, OPIS, a Dow Jones company, provides a quick look at the main price trends in the global PV industry.

The new government coalition in the Netherlands says the nation’s current net-metering scheme will be maintained until the end of 2026. The previous Parliament had rejected a proposal to cancel the scheme by the end of 2025.

SolarPower Europe has developed an agrisolar digital map showcasing more than 200 projects across 10 European countries, with a total capacity exceeding 15 GW.

Spanish consultancy AleaSoft Energy Forecasting says France, Germany, Spain and Portugal all broke records for daily PV energy production in the second week of May, as prices in all major European electricity markets, except for the French market, continued to increase.

The first day of the RE-Source Southeast Conference in Sofia, Bulgaria, this week underscored European and regional interest in renewable-energy projects based on corporate power purchase agreements (PPAs). Negative or very low electricity prices in European electricity markets affect the appetite for such projects, but the solution for investors and policymakers is to approach the issue systematically.

The Bangladeshi government has issued a call for consultants to conduct a feasibility study, initial environmental examination, and environmental and social impact assessment for a 100 MW solar plant. The consultants will also be expected to survey the transmission line route for connection to the nearest grid substation.

An international research team has developed a new thermal regulation strategy to improve the performance of an inverted tin-lead perovskite cell intended for use in all-perovskite tandem solar cells. The novel device reached an efficiency of 23.4% and, when it was integrated in a tandem cell, it contributed to achieve a 27.2% efficiency, while helping the device maintain remarkable stability levels.

A team of Swiss-based researchers have engineered a device that uses solar energy to heat to over one thousand degrees celsius. It is envisaged the technology could make it possible to use solar energy to decarbonise energy-intensive industries that require high temperatures for production processes.

The Bridgestone World Solar Challenge has announced a new set of dates for for the 2025 edition of its unique 3,000-kilometre solar car race across the Australian continent, along with some regulation changes.

Developed by Scientists in Slovakia, the double-layer coating uses a silica-titania thin film as the bottom layer and an inorganic-organic upper layer made of silica modified with triethoxy(octyl)silane as the top layer. According to its creators, the new coating increase glass transmittance by 7% compared to uncoated glass.

Zhongchu Guoneng Technology Co., Ltd. (ZCGN) has switched on the world’s largest compressed air energy storage project in China. The $207.8 million energy storage power station has a capacity of 300 MW/1,800 MWh and uses an underground salt cave.

With solar module oversupply triggering a price freefall in 2023 and no recovery in sight, market consolidation, inventory pile-up, technology shifts, and challenges to reshoring PV manufacturing are set to affect all levels of the solar supply chain.

Researchers at the German research institute have found that indirect gravure printing for metallization of silicon heterojunction solar cells reduces silver consumption and cycle times to below 0.5 seconds per cell, while still enabling conversion efficiencies of up to 20.7%.

Intensified trade measures against China via higher tariffs on imported solar and battery cells are a significant policy step, but the impact is clouded by global manufacturing shifts, price decreases and looming US Department of Commerce trade complaints.

A Chinese-Canadian research group has utilized for the first time a cadmium iodide doping technique to stabilize the blade coating process in the manufacturing of solar cells based on formamidinium lead iodide (FAPbI3) perovskite. The academics built a cell showing a considerable increase in efficiency compared to an identical device without cadmium doping.

A Chinese-Canadian research team proposed a new PV mounting solution relying on two types of spacers and two types of clamps that can be printed with common printing materials. The cost of the different solutions presented varies from CAD1.50 ($1.10) to CAD3.83.

Atess Power has developed a new series of battery energy storage system (BESS) containers. The Chinese manufacturer is offering 20 HC and 40 HC containers, as well as battery-only containers with storage capacities up to 3,440 kWh.

China Southern Power Grid has deployed a 10 MWh sodium-ion battery in China’s Guangxi Zhuang region. It is the first phase of a 100 MWh project.

The Electric Power Research Institute (EPRI), the US Department of Energy’s Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL), and German battery analysis specialist Twaice have jointly evaluated 26 battery fires between 2018 and 2023. They say that the diversity of components plays a critical role in igniting fires.

A startup spun out of the Australian Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO) has secured a grant to build a 5 kW electrolyzer that will be deployed at a UK power plant operated by French energy utility EDF.

UNSW scientists have suggested to use dual-fuel reciprocating engines for adding gas-to-power operations in large scale production of hydrogen based on PV power. The preliminary findings of their research show that the proposed system is still achieving a too high LCOE for commercial maturity. Decreasing electrolyzer costs, policy interventions and changing energy market dynamics, however, may more than halve the LCOE values in the future.