It’s claimed the decentralized desalination system can deliver a levelized cost for desalinated water of US$0.7-4.3/m3, depending on PV costs and electricity prices. It was built with several concentrated photovoltaic/thermal (CPV-T) collectors, a hot water tank, a V-MEMD module, a seawater feed tank, and a distillate tank.

A new report from Bernreuter Research reveals that Wacker Chemie lost its top spot in the 2020 global polysilicon rankings. It was also the only western company among the “Big Six” that are expected to form a new polysilicon super league in the PV industry. Overall, these six reached a total polysilicon capacity of 470,000 MT last year.

Dutch researchers have studied how solar parks can be blended into the landscape across 11 “frontrunner” sites in Europe. They considered visual impact, land availability, and end-of-life issues.

The Swedish company secured $38 million to build a manufacturing facility it has planned with the support of Swiss conglomerate ABB. The factory will be located in Stockholm and produce the company’s Powerfoyle products.

U.K. researchers have developed a flexible thin-film cadmium telluride (CdTe) solar cell for use in ultra-thin glass for space applications.

Hydrogen and hydrogen-based fuels will not be able to move forward fast enough to replace fossil fuels and tackle climate change, according to a German-Swiss research team that claims direct electrification alternatives are cheaper and easier to implement. The scientists cite too-high prices, short-term scarcity and long-term uncertainty, as the main reasons for their skepticism.

Compressed air energy storage (CAES) may become an interesting solution for countries with weak interconnection with their neighbors, according to scientists from Finland’s Lappeenranta University of Technology (LUT). North America and sub-Saharan Africa were found to have the largest portion of suitable areas for this kind of storage technology, and Western Canada in particular, to have the world’s strongest potential.

According to official statistics from grid operator TEIAS, the country added around 400 MW of PV capacity in the first four months of 2021.

Researchers in the United Kingdom have built a 14%-efficient organic PV device that can be used in high-speed optical wireless communication systems. The cell consists of a 4×2.5mm photoactive layer fabricated with a bulk heterojunction of a polymer donor and fullerene and non-fullerene acceptors.

German scientists have proposed a new design for stacks used in redox flow batteries. Through a powder-to-roll process, a device that weighs 80% less than a conventional stack was fabricated.