Technology

Following a strong year for clean energy spending, 2017 saw a 7% decline in renewable power investment – to around $298 billion – while the share of fossil fuels in energy supply funding rose for the first time since 2014, according to the International Energy Agency in a report published today.

High-ranking officials from China and the EU have signed a joint statement to foster technological and political co-operation in clean energy. The regions will also develop emissions trading systems further, with officials seeing such schemes as a policy tool to foster innovation for a low-carbon economy.

UN delegates are meeting in New York to negotiate further realization of the Sustainable Development Goals. One of the goals is to ‘Ensure access to affordable, reliable, sustainable and modern energy for all.’ And Bloomberg NEF argues that thanks to new technology this goal is more feasible than ever, and that delegates should focus on building financial and regulatory frameworks to enable large scale micro-grid development.

Gogla has released a report showing the positive economic effects of deploying small-scale pay-as-you-go solar systems in off-grid regions. More than half of the survey’srespondents reported having increased economic activity, with many of those starting new businesses or significantly increasing their household income.

Jay Lin, CEO of PVGuider discusses why the effects of light induced degradation (LID) in PERC cells cannot be completely eliminated. To explain the difficulty, we first need to understand the LID behavior of the cells, he says.

Following the U.K. government’s announcement to significantly increase EV numbers on its roads, a call for applications was announced. Ramping up EV numbers does necessitate a convenient and low-cost charging infrastructure. To achieve this, public administration offices will fund trial phases of promising concepts. Businesses can apply until August 29.

The virtual power plant (VPP) solutions provider connected its product with a 2 MW storage system in Belgium. It will be the country’s first storage system to take part in the grid’s frequency control reserve.

The project connects four to six households, and lets dwellers pre-purchase daily access to electricity using a mobile app. A successful trial phase has just been finished and the executing association, Nanoé Développement has set new goals to reach in the near future.

A team of scientists at the University of Kansas has developed a method to boost the lifetime of excited electrons in graphene, a development which the team alleges could lead to the development of highly efficient, ultrathin solar cells.

Researchers from the École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL) in Switzerland have developed a process for depositing a perovskite layer onto a silicon solar cell, which it says has already resulted in the creation of a 25.2% efficient tandem cell.