Residential PV

Scientists in Ireland investigated the effect of shunt resistance on a PV cell’s electrical performance. The group says its finding could potentially lead to the development of models for early detection of various forms of cell degradation, allowing for intervention to repair or replace components before major power losses occur.

A grid-connected community battery has gone live in Sydney, Australia, with New South Wales electricity distributor Endeavour Energy testing the tech to maximize the benefits of rooftop solar.

PVcase, a Lithuania-based solar project software company, raised $100 million to expand the market for its platform and extend its capability.

Sekisui House-W is testing a pilot project consisting of a residential PV system, a small-sized electrolyzer, hydrogen-absorbing alloy tanks, and a fuel cell. The company said the hydrogen storage alloys used in the project have higher energy density than battery storage.

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.

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.

Tesla owners can select a feature in an app to set their Powerwall batteries to solely charge their vehicles on excess stored PV capacity.