Residential PV

The Philippines’ Department of Energy (DOE) is moving ahead with plans to require solar system installers to officially register with it. The DOE says that only registered installers will be recommended to government entities seeking PV installation services.

Kosovo plans to auction off 950 MW of renewables over the next two years, to the tune of €1.2 billion ($1.29 billion).

The PairTree off-grid solar charging system for electric vehicles (EVs) combines bifacial solar panels ranging from 4.6 kW to 5 kW, a 42.4 kWh capacity storage system, and one or two AC “Level 2” EV chargers.

Scientists from China have developed a novel optimization method for medium-depth ground source heat pumps, using an improved chaos particle swarm optimization. They coupled it with either a heat storage tank or a shallow borehole heat exchanger and found that both system typologies increase the heat pump’s coefficient of performance.

The rebound effect consists of a reduction in expected gains from a more resource-efficient technology as a result of behavioral or systemic change. An international research team has investigated this phenomenon in the residential PV segment in Vietnam and has found that it could happen in any country where the policy supporting solar power is not fully and scientifically explained.

Investors and developers raised more than $34.3 billion in 160 deals last year, according to a new report by Mercom Capital.

Netherlands-based Taylor, a spinoff of Eindhoven University of Technology, has raised €8 million ($8.6 million) to expand sales of its cells string optimizers that the company claims improves PV rooftop system performance and safety.

Brazil has pushed past 38 GW of total installed PV capacity, with around 26.3 GW consisting of distributed-generation solar systems.

A European research group has tested an energy system combining PVT collectors, a water-to-water heat pump and borehole thermal energy storage in an Italian swine farm and has found the proposed system can completely replace fossil fuel-based power generation.

New research from Belgium shows the importance of assessing inverter reliability by including climate-based PV panel degradation rates. The scientists found that, especially in hot and arid climates, PV inverters should be designed with parameters above the standard value.