Commercial & Industrial PV

Scientists in Korea have proposed to use an algorithm that simulates the behavior of foraging bees to shape a new grid-forming inverter design. The approach is designed for both grid-connected and islanded inverters.

Germany’s Fraunhofer Institute for Applied Solid State Physics (IAF) has developed an ultra-efficient circuit topology for voltage converters with an electrical efficiency of 99.74%. The tech could considerably raise the coefficient of performance for electrocaloric heat pumps and the scientists are now considering components based on semiconductor gallium nitride (GaN) for higher power density and efficiency.

China’s National Energy Administration (NEA) says the nation installed 78.42 GW of solar in the first six months of this year, bringing it to nearly 470 GW of cumulative installed PV capacity by the end of June.

Germany installed more than 1 GW of new PV systems in June alone. Its cumulative installed PV capacity hit 73.8 GW at the end of the first half of this year.

A large US environmental coalition has signed a letter to support solar deployment on 8,000 miles of federal, open-air canals.

In a new weekly update for pv magazine, Solcast, a DNV company, presents the solar irradiance data it collected for northern Europe in the first week of July. The data show that an unseasonal storm created by a strong low pressure system moving across from England into the North Sea had a strong impact on solar power generation in the Netherlands and Denmark.

Luxembourg has kicked off its second tender for C&I solar projects ranging in size from 30 kW to 5 MW. It is offering rebates of up to €745 ($835) per kilowatt installed and up to 55% of the total cost of buying and installing systems.

China-based GoodWe has developed two new solutions – the ETC 100 kW hybrid inverter and the BTC 100 kW retrofit battery inverter – for commercial and industrial (C&I) solar applications.

Utilities increasingly recognize heat pumps as a critical technology for heat decarbonization. They are deploying multi-megawatt systems in different parts of Europe to simultaneously serve multiple users and offer new avenues for the decarbonization of buildings.

Scientists in Cyprus evaluated six different models used to predict the power losses caused by the accumulation of dust, dirt, and other substances on the surface of PV panels in the island’s arid climate. Results from the various models were compared with soiling loss data from a “test bench” installation at the University of Cyprus in Nicosia, revealing a potential advantage for machine-learning approaches backed by satellite data.