Highlights

The airplane is powered by 22 square meters of solar cells with an efficiency of up to 24% and 14 kWh of lithium-ion batteries. According to its creators, it can reach an altitude of 25,000m.

Coal India Ltd. is accepting proposals from parties willing to partner on its proposed 4 GW solar PV ingot-wafer-cell-module manufacturing facility. Applications will be accepted until Sept. 16.

FRV, Harmony Energy, and Tesla are building a 99 MW/198 MWh facility in Essex. The system will rely on the Megapack solution from the U.S. manufacturer.

The result was confirmed by Germany’s Fraunhofer Institute for Solar Energy Systems (Fraunhofer ISE). The cell was fabricated through a low-temperature co-evaporation method for the growth of the light-absorbing CIGS semiconductor thin film.

Developed by Australian scientists, the demonstrated system is claimed to achieve a solar-to-hydrogen efficiency of 20% at a levelized cost of hydrogen (LCOH) of $4.10/kg. The direct solar hydrogen generation technology is powered by a tandem perovskite-silicon solar cell with an unprecedented high open-circuit voltage of 1.271 V, and a power conversion efficiency of 24.3%.

German scientists have built a perovskite solar cell with spiro-TTB as a hole transport material, via the thermal co-evaporation method. The solar cell has an open-circuit voltage of 1.08 V, a fill factor of 83.0%, and a short-circuit current of 21.6 mA cm.

Manufacturer Sunlight plans to invest €30 million to add 1.3 GWh of annual production capacity of lead-acid products by the third quarter of next year. The company will also devote €20 million to expanding its lithium-ion battery assembly lines.

Lucas TVS, an Indian automotive components manufacturer, will set up a semisolid lithium-ion cell manufacturing facility in the Indian city of Chennai under a technology licensing agreement with U.S. startup 24M. The first phase of the planned 10 GWh fab will start production in the second half of 2023.

TotalEnergies plans to build a 1 GW solar plant near the port of Basra, in southern Iraq.

For developers and investors who are ready to start talking about solar+storage projects, there are some interesting and not so straightforward decisions to be made on the sizing of assets. Siobhán Green, lead on battery storage in continental Europe for Everoze, looks at the different approaches to sizing and how to choose between them. In particular, she assesses the ‘lifetime’ factors to dimensioning and discusses how to plan for degradation and potential through-life resets to the revenue stack.