Estonian researchers have developed a new monograin powder technology made of microcrystals, which can form parallel connected miniature solar cells in a large module. By replacing copper with silver in the absorber material, the researchers were able to increase the efficiency of the cells by more than 2%.

South Korean scientists have transformed an opaque crystalline silicon solar cell into a transparent one by punching holes into it measuring around 100 μm in diameter. A neutral-colored, transparent c-Si substrate was used to develop the new cell, which is said to have an efficiency of up to 12.2%.

According to a new study by Finland’s LUT University, solar PV consumes between 2% and 15% of the water that coal and nuclear power plants use to produce just 1 MWh of output; for wind, this percentage ranges from 0.1% to 14%. Under the researchers’ best policy scenario, water consumption could be reduced by 75.1% by 2030, compared to 2015 levels.

The PV project, which was tendered by Jordanian utility NEPCO in 2017, will sell power at $0.059/kWh. The plant is located in Jordan’s Risha region, which is roughly 300 km northeast of Amman.

The 8.5 kW pilot project, which was launched in February 2018, will soon be expanded to 50 kW. The Dutch consortium behind the installation eventually plans to expand it to 1 MW and then up to 100 MW at a later stage. The Netherlands Enterprise Agency (RVO) provided financial backing for the project.

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

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.

The French institute said the result has been certified by ISFH CalTeC, in Germany. The manufacturers claim they were able to increase cell performance by improving the plasma-enhanced chemical vapor deposition of amorphous silicon nanolayers and the conductive and anti-reflective transparent oxide layers.