The cell has achieved a power conversion efficiency of 23.5%. The result was confirmed by China’s National Center of Supervision and Inspection on Solar Photovoltaic Product Quality (CPVT).

The 25 W solar panel has been designed to operate at air mass zero (AM0), which is the standard spectrum outside the Earth’s atmosphere. According to the PV manufacturer, the module has a weight of just 82 grams, while a small 300 W array comprised of these panels would weigh in at around 1 kg.

The Uzbek Ministry of Energy plans to hold two more solar tenders for a series of PV plants spread across the Kashkadarya and Fergana, Bukhara, Khorezm, and Namangan regions. It also revealed that there are 1.29 GW worth of projects under construction in the country.

Developed by the Korea Institute of Energy Research (KIER), the “non-destructive” technology is claimed to enable the recovery of 100% of a module’s glass and to allow the reuse of silicon for producing new solar cells with an efficiency of 20.05%.

Scientists in Bangladesh have evaluated how a 50 MW floating PV plant could be integrated with the 230 MW Karnafuli Hydroelectric Power Station, located at the Kaptai Dam on the Karnaphuli River. They found that the two energy sources can be perfectly optimized and that PV can compensate for the reservoir’s shortage of water storage during the winter season while hydropower can compensate for the poor yields of the floating array during the monsoon season.

A Norwegian consortium has built an industrial heat pump that can reach a temperature of up to 180 degrees Celsius. The machine can be used with different industrial processes that rely on steam as an energy carrier and can reduce a facility’s energy consumption by between 40% and 70%, as it enables the recovery of low-temperature waste heat.

The furniture giant will sell power from wind and solar facilities to final customers through the Strömma offer.

Scientists in Saudi Arabia have conducted one of the longest tests on the stability of perovskite-silicon tandem solar cells. According to their findings, the most affected parameter under the hot and humid climate of the region is the device fill factor, which dropped from 80% to 50% in just six months.

Next Energy and Marubeni are developing a blockchain tech for PV module inspection – with the support of the Japanese government – which they claim is able to provide data on a panel’s traceability and components as well as verifying that the data were not modified or tampered with.

An Indian-Malaysian research group has investigated the effectiveness of several passive cooling techniques for solar panels, including the placement of plants around the modules or coir pith underneath them, both of which, surprisingly, offered good performance in terms of temperature reduction and power yield.