Installations

BayWa re’s ECOwind subsidiary and Austrian energy supplier EVN have finished building a 24.5 MWp floating PV plant in Grafenwörth, Austria. They claim it is the biggest such installation in Central Europe.

The isolation of Portugal’s electrical grid is hindering the growth of renewables, according to GlobalData’s latest report. Storage will play a pivotal role if the country hopes to achieve its solar and renewable installation goals, it says.

Solar module prices continued to fall in January, and there is no end in sight. The main drivers impacting prices are lower shipping rates from China and the further recovery of the euro-US dollar exchange rate. Martin Schachinger, of pvXchange, expects other effects, such as slowly falling energy costs or polysilicon and wafer prices – which are in freefall – to further strengthen the trend in the coming months.

The Africa Solar Industry Association (AFSIA) has identified the top five solar markets in Africa. Its latest report also looks at the most notable large-scale projects across the continent.

Croatia’s Viktor Lenac Shipyard aims to replace electric boilers and a water-to-water heat pump with a seawater heat pump, in order to provide heat and cooling for buildings. The pilot project is backed by EU funding and has launched a tender to support the construction of the seawater heat pump.

Scientists in Belgium have designed a solar-powered electrolyzer that uses standard-sized, large area shingled silicon PV for water splitting. The system is reportedly able to achieve solar-to-hydrogen efficiency of 10% at electrolyzer current densities of approximately 60 mA cm−2.

Nina Hojnik, the director of the Slovenian Photovoltaic Association, speaks to pv magazine about new provisions for large-scale solar in Slovenia. She discusses several regulatory obstacles to developing agrivoltaics, as well as plans to phase out net metering for rooftop PV.

US researchers are studying how agrivoltaic systems mounted on single-axis trackers affect rainfall and light redistribution at a 1.2 MW installation on grassland in Boulder, Colorado.

The United Kingdom hit 14.3 GW of cumulative solar capacity by the end of last year, according to provisional government data. New solar capacity grew by 4% year on year, with the rooftop PV market accounting for most of the new installations.

Gautam Solar’s 10-busbar solar panels feature peak power outputs ranging from 520 W to 550 W, with front-side conversion efficiencies ranging from 20.11% to 21.27%.