Highlights

BloombergNEF says falling battery costs and “surging” renewables penetration make energy storage a “compelling flexible resource in many power systems.”

An unspecified sum is being provided by the European Union to help Enel become a large-scale PV panel manufacturer. The Italian company secured the funds through the Innovation Fund

Scientists in Germany analyzed the main sources of performance loss in a silicon heterojunction cell, and developed several optimization strategies to improve overall performance. By adding a second layer of amorphous silicon at the rear of the device, and a magnesium fluoride anti-reflective layer, they were able to boost cell efficiency by around 1% to reach 24.51%.

A European consortium consisting of Italian energy agency Enea and the French Alternative Energies and Atomic Energy Commission, among other entities, has developed a plan to build a low-emissions pilot line to recover critical and precious metals such as silicon, indium, gallium and silver. The line will be designed to reintroduce new materials and new products into the production cycle.

IHS Markit predicts that global installed solar PV capacity will grow by 20% to over 200 GW in 2022, despite a difficult cost environment. PV system costs are expected to resume their downward trend from 2023, when more polysilicon capacities will come into operation.

The procurement exercise’s final average price is 3% lower than that of the previous tender of the same kind. Around 636 MW of PV capacity was allocated by the French authorities.

The U.S. National Renewable Energy Laboratory says in a new report that costs for all types of PV systems continue to fall, although it notes that balance-of-systems costs have increased or remained flat across sectors this year.

Shirdi Sai Electricals, an Indian transformer manufacturer and EPC contractor, has placed a $252.16 million incentive bid to set up a fully integrated, 4 GW polysilicon-to-module fab under the Indian government’s production-linked incentives scheme.

Built by Polish energy producer ZE PAK, the 70 MW solar plant will sell solar power to Polish telecommunications group Polsat under a 15-year power purchase agreement.

In a financial world of stocks, bonds, foreign exchange, and credit cards, trillions of dollars are traded daily, with money flows handled by a bevy of databanks. In the world of cryptocurrency, billions of dollars worth of Bitcoin are traded through as many as 400,000 transactions per day, consuming the energy supply of a modernized country. The quirk is a “proof of work” feature that provides decentralized security. Is Bitcoin’s energy usage all for nothing, or is it a game-changer for renewable assets and generators? Tristan Rayner explores.