Community

Canadian researchers have conducted a lifecycle analysis showing that it’s good for the environment to put solar on rooftops, but a mix of small-scale PV and agrivoltaics might be a better alternative.

Turkey’s new agrivoltaics project, under the ODTÜ-GÜNAM Center for Solar Energy Research and Applications’ Livinglab initiative, will allow researchers to test products and production processes by developing tracker systems with control algorithms specially designed for specific crops.

The Danish Energy Agency says it dished out a total of DKK 4.2 million ($61,9542) in grant funding this year to nine local energy communities and projects supporting renewable energy. Projects include an energy community start-up guide for rural environmentalists to an energy community feasibility study in a decades-old garden association.

RES4Africa Foundation brings attention to the role of solar PV in addressing the water, energy and food crisis in the southern and eastern Mediterranean countries. The region is characterised by abundance of sunlight, coupled with scarce availability of agricultural land and freshwater resources to feed its fast-growing populations.

Lithuania-based Solitek has launched a carport product line featuring 370 W glass-glass frameless modules. It is designed to withstand a snow load of up to 2.5 kN/m2 and 27m/s of wind loads.

Israel’s Ministry of Energy and Infrastructure says it is currently developing a multi-year program for communities attacked by Hamas on Oct. 7. It aims to deploy 5 GW of energy in the destroyed areas, once residents return.

Scientists from Israel have calculated how long it would take for PV plants and afforestation projects to offset their warming impacts caused by the darkening of land. The results showed that in drylands, PV fields could be over 50 times more efficient than afforestation.

The European Commission first set up the rules for energy sharing communities in 2018 and 2019, with Portugal rolling out its own legislation soon after. Despite these efforts, five years on there are only three energy sharing communities legally operating in the Mediterranean country, with hundreds more stuck in a year-long regulatory backlog, one local engineer tells pv magazine.

One of the project architects behind a solar power system in a southern Lebanese village tells pv magazine that the 200-panel array – which pumped water from an underground well for roughly 400 families – was allegedly destroyed earlier this month by Israeli forces. The community needs help rebuilding it, he says.

Researchers have looked into the impact of potential regulated charge exemptions on two types of energy communities in 39 European countries. They have found that communities with collectively owned PV systems achieve greater savings.