Commercial & Industrial PV

New figures from the Israeli authorities show that the country continues to deploy rooftop PV systems at a rapid pace. New rooftop installations hit 703 MW in 2022, up significantly from 537 MW in 2021 and 296 in 2020.

A fire occurred broke out this week at a layer poultry farm in Volpago del Montello, Italy. The blaze, which killed more than 20,000 birds, reportedly may have originated from a PV system on the premises.

Taiwanese manufacturer Winaico has developed new 525 W TOPCon solar panels with a power conversion efficiency of 22.1% and a temperature coefficient of -0.30% per degree Celsius.

Prefabricated floating solar PV provider Sunlit Sea, based in Norway, has provided its floaters for a 60 kW floating array installed at a waterpark in Germany.

New research from India claims solar modules with 3.2 mm-thick front glass may not be strong enough to withstand storms producing big hailstones. The scientists found that a front glass of at least 4 mm should be used to avoid significant damage.

Researchers in Korea have designed applied machine learning techniques to enable users to have more control of the timing of heating and cooling in air-source heat pumps. The system is based on backpropagation, which is an algorithm designed to test for errors working back from output nodes to input nodes.

Australia’s Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO) will lead a “smart buildings” pilot project that has the potential to create a new ecosystem of technologies and solutions to support flexible demand for energy.

Following a suppressed 2022, US community solar is expected to have an upward trajectory, boosted by new state laws, the implementation of billions in grant money from the Inflation Reduction Act, and the smoothing of bumps in the supply chain.

The novel mooring solution consists of perimeter pontoons, barriers, clump weights, mooring lines and anchors. Its creators claim it is cheaper in materials and maintenance, as well as more wave-stable, compared to mooring systems using elastic cables.

The French government says it plans to install 48.1 GW of solar by 2030 and 140 GW by 2050. About 45 GW of the mid-century total will be generated via installations on wasteland, while 35 GW will come from rooftop installations.