Energy communities should be supported via network tariff adjustments
New research from Belgium shows that energy-sharing alone is not attractive enough for citizens and businesses willing adopt solar through an energy community. According to the study, policy support for energy communities should take the form of network tariff adjustments reflecting the community’s measurable benefits for the distribution grid.
How to achieve higher power yield in east-west oriented solar arrays deployed on flat roofs
Researchers in Switzerland investigated different setups to maximize energy yields per area for PV Systems on flat roofs. Their work revealed that using horizontal single-axis tracking and reflectors could add up to 5% greater performance.
Carrier launches new air-to-water heat pumps for residential, commercial applications
Carrier, a US-based heating solutions provider, has introduced a new 4-14 kW line of heat pumps with a coefficient of performance of up to 4.90. The system use propane as the refrigerant and can reportedly reach leaving water temperature of 75 C.
Chinese PV Industry Brief: Aiko Solar starts making back contact PV panels
Aiko Solar has started production at its Jinan factory, its third facility for n-type all-back-contact solar modules. The plant is designed for 30 GW of solar cell and panel capacity, with the first 10 GW phase set to reach full output by late 2025.
Firefighter injured in solar-plus-storage explosion and fire in Spain
The fire, which affected a photovoltaic installation in a container with batteries at the port of Gandia, started at 6:14 p.m. on January 4.
India adds record 24.5 GW of solar in 2024
India installed a record 24.5 GW of solar capacity in 2024, marking its highest annual additions to date.
Bright US Midwest contrasts with cloudy coasts in 2024
In a new weekly update for pv magazine, Solcast, a DNV company, reports that the US Midwest enjoyed exceptional conditions with irradiance up to 10% above normal across the year, while areas along the Gulf Coast and much of the West Coast experienced slightly below-average sunshine.
Sweden adds 1 GW of solar in 2024
Sweden installed about 1 GW of solar in 2024, matching 2022 levels after a record 2023.
Chinese scientists design hybrid heat pump providing ultra-high temperature heating at 180 C
The proposed system uses waste heat by thermally coupling a water lithium bromide absorption heat transformer with a water vapor compression heat
pump. It reportedly achieved a temperature elevation of up to 110 C and ultra-high temperature heating of up to 180 C.
Ensemble deep learning for PV cell defect detection
Researchers have tested eight stand-alone deep learning methods for PV cell fault detection and have found that their accuracy was as high as 73%. All methods were trained and tested on the ELPV benchmark dataset, which includes 2,624 electroluminescence (EL) images of PV cells.
