Scientists in Spain studied electricity demand data for the Kobe refugee camp in Ethiopia to optimize several minigrid scenarios, also integrating the use of electric pressure cookers. Their analysis showed that introduction of the cooker required an increase in PV capacity of up 68%.

Scientists have developed a way to compare the data given by PV manufacturers based on standard test conditions (STC) to the real conditions in the field. The proposed technique is based on the single-diode model and the Newton-Raphson algorithm. The maximum relative error was found to be at 1.37%.

Scientists have placed mist nozzles inside a bifacial PV module and measured it under an extremely hot climate. The module was found to generate up to 37% more electricity on sunny days and up to 46% more on cloudy days compared to standard monofacial panels.

The Chinese manufacturer said its new heat pump systems have a heating capacity of 4 kW to 16 kW and a coefficient of performance of up to 5.05.

Researchers from the Middle East have simulated a novel PV thermal module which includes a thermoelectric generator above the absorber layer, conical helical tape in the cooling tube and a ferrofluid. These technologies reportedly contributed to increased PV efficiency and thermal efficiency by 2.12% and 23.34%, respectively.

Scientists have developed a novel method to identify which hills of coal waste are suitable for the construction of a solar plant. Their technique integrates GIS and the technique for order preference by similarity to an ideal solution. They tested the new approach suburban areas of Yangquan City, China.

New research from Spain has sought to understand if dimethyl ether and ternary mixtures of carbon dioxide, dimethyl ether and butane could represent an alternative to propane in heat pump systems. Their analysis has shown dimethyl ether could be the best alternative to R290, as it offers the highest coefficient of performance values for both cooling and heating, and avoids issues related to temperature glide.

Using Google Earth imagery and 2019-2022 Sentinel-2 datasets, Chinese scientists have developed a two-stage classification framework to obtain the annual global dataset of solar photovoltaic panels at 20-meter resolution from 2019 to 2022.

Scientists have developed a precursor formulation for different PV simulation tools that can help calculate the expected performance of solar farms deployed on hilly slopes. Validation tests against an experimental setup showed an error of less than 3%.

A three-year field experiment comparing the performance and reliability of passivated emitter and rear cell (PERC), tunnel oxide passivated contact (TOPCon), and silicon heterojunction (SHJ) modules in desert climates found that HJT modules exhibited the highest degradation, while TOPCon modules showed the lowest degradation.