Portuguese energy group EDP has secured a long-term power purchase agreement for its 200 MW Los Cuervos solar plant in the Mexican state of Aguascalientes. Local offtaker Ammper has agreed to buy the electricity.

Taiwanese manufacturer Heliartec Solutions is offering BIPV panels for building facades that can be designed to mimic different kinds of textures in conventional building materials. The panels can also work as colored laminated safety glass and replace traditional cladding in the ventilated facades of buildings. They vary in length from 60 cm to 240 cm, with widths ranging from 30 cm to 120 cm. Depending on their size, the panels can offer power outputs of 90 W to 150 W per square meter.  

A U.S. research group is now developing new inverters to protect solar installations from cyberattacks. The researchers also aim to create new cybersecurity standards. Professor Alan Mantooth, the group’s research coordinator, said that inverters can be shut down if they are hacked, or contribute to grid instability and result in the overcharging of batteries, while potentially creating problems that we still don’t know how to address.

A new paper published by researchers at Malaysia’s Multimedia University provides a new method to assess the effectiveness of different cooling systems for photovoltaic modules. The proposed technique relies on measuring the output of the module with added cooling and comparing this to its power rating under standard test conditions.

The island nation’s Agricultural Marketing Board is seeking proposals for a ground-mounted PV plant. Developers have a week to submit bids.

The Fraunhofer Institute for Solar Energy Systems’ (ISE) CalLab has confirmed the new efficiency rating. The researchers have combined semiconductors, perovskites and CIGS to produce a monolithic two-terminal tandem cell.

Solar remains an interesting option to power water desalination despite obstacles to its widespread adoption. A recent study has highlighted the processing or dumping of brine waste as an important factor to consider.

A failed top rail girder connection was responsible for the 2019 roof collapse at AZ Alkmaar’s football stadium, an investigation by Dutch engineering firm Royal HaskoningDHV has revealed. The collapse was triggered by strong wind loads during a storm.

The new regulations state that import duties on solar modules will now be calculated per kilogram rather than by square meter, as they were under the old regulations. This could favor Turkish manufacturers, as high-efficiency modules are generally now heavier than they were a few years ago. Under the previous rules, PV panel imports enjoyed reduced value-added tax rates as yields increased and module sizes remained unchanged.

U.S. researchers claim to have added iron sulfate to anthraquinone disulfonic acid in a redox flow battery for the first time. The scientists said the combination could lead to inexpensive and more stable redox flow storage for just $54/kWh and said $66/kWh is already possible.