A 350 MWh battery storage system in Europe is delivering significantly less energy than expected due to cell imbalance, with the battery management system failing to detect the issue, tradable energy volumes chronically overestimated, and weekly balancing cost exposure reaching up to €110,000 ($127,745). This is one of the real-world failure scenarios to be examined at the Battery Business & Development Forum on April 1.

Invertix has launched 22 specialized AI “workers” to automate O&M tasks for renewable energy assets, targeting inefficiencies in data handling, alarm management, and reporting. The startup says its system enables PV plant operators to scale portfolios more efficiently by reducing manual workloads, while keeping humans in the loop for critical decisions.

pv magazine spoke with Fan Bin, founder of GCL Optoelectronics, about how high-throughput experimentation and AI-driven optimization are accelerating perovskite development, and why stability, and not efficiency, remains the key challenge on the path to mass production

The PPA price for pure photovoltaic projects has fallen by 20% over the past year, making such contracts less competitive. However, clear structures for bankable hybrid PPAs are now beginning to take shape, says Pieter van der Meulen, Senior Account Manager at LevelTen Energy, in an interview with pv magazine.

After a record year, the European power purchase agreement (PPA) market has declined sharply. At an industry gathering this week in Amsterdam, participants highlighted rising PPA complexity and potential solutions, including how to handle negative prices in solar PPAs and the move toward hybrid PPAs with battery storage.

More than 500 solar leaders met in Brussels this week for the SolarPower Europe Summit to discuss energy flexibility and EU policy. The EU energy chief said the Affordable Energy Action Plan could save €2.5 trillion ($2.7 trillion).

Solarwatt has launched six new inverters and batteries as part of its Solarwatt Home line and outlined its future strategy. The German company, currently in transition, recently closed its solar module plant in Germany and announced staff reductions.

Sigenergy has been active in Germany since 2023 and was one of the first companies to present a bidirectional DC wallbox that is integrated into a photovoltaic storage system. Co-founder and CTO Samuel Zhang talks about Sigenergy’s story and its plans in expanding into the commercial market, integrating AI into their systems and the future of vehicle-to-grid technology. According to its own statement, the company, is now valued at 600 million euros.

This year is ending with a new record, but installation companies are looking for orders again, says Tim Rosengart, managing director of the Selfmade Energy supply platform. His figures show how falling module prices and the new market situation are putting pressure on PV system prices.

Christian Pho Duc, CTO of Smartenergy, spoke with pv magazine at Intersolar 2023 about the recent EU decision to remove uncertainties over the production and use of green hydrogen, as the European Union has finally defined criteria for solar-powered electrolyzers. He stressed the importance of the new targets, under which the industry will have to buy 42% of its hydrogen from clean sources by 2030.