Residential PV

Scientists at Germany’s Fraunhofer Institute ISE and a consortium of heat pump manufacturers have achieved a new efficiency record in their development of a low-refrigerant propane refrigeration circuit. The device has a heating capacity of 12.8 kW with only 124 grams of propane, amounting to a refrigerant charge of approximately 10g/kW, compared to 60g/kW for commercially available devices.

The European Commission intends to help municipalities and public entities to buy rooftop PV systems. Its DG Growth initiative aims to make the public procurement of rooftop solar systems easier.

Australian scientists have tested different reflective coatings in solar tiles and have found that they could improve the performance of building-integrated PV devices by up to 6.6%. They are currently working with building product manufacturers to bring their tech closer to commercial production.

Domestic hot water, with a heating system powered exclusively by DC solar power, has now covered the needs of an apartment building in Linz, Austria, for a period of a year. The 14 residential units are each connected to their own 1.36 KW solar arrays.

Ireland’s new solar measures, first announced in June, are expected to facilitate deployment in the residential and commercial PV segments.

FuturaSun has revealed plans to expand its production capacity in China and its home market, Italy. Its new all-black solar panel features a power conversion efficiency of up to 21.60%.

Brazil has deployed 6.52 GW of cumulative utility-scale solar and 13.57 GW of distributed-generation PV projects below 5 MW in size.

A growing number of residential solar projects include energy storage batteries. In the first part of this series, we look at the backup power feature of batteries.

The first renewable energy community in Portugal was inaugurated in August 2021 in Miranda do Douro, a rural village in the north. One year on, pv magazine spoke with the company behind the project to assess its status. With a production capacity of 73.3 kWp, solar has saved the community €31,500 ($30,850) on electricity bills.

Waleed AlHallaj, the head of business development for the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) at JinkoSolar, recently spoke to pv magazine about the prospects for the regional energy storage market. He said that storage systems have already penetrated markets with weak grids, such as Yemen and Lebanon.