Technology

An international research team in China has used Czochralski n-type c-Si wafers from China-based Sichuan Yongxiang to build textured wafers with a thickness ranging from 65 μm to 55 μm. They have used the wafers in heterojunction solar cells ton hit efficiencies close to those of devices cells based on conventional wafers.

A Japanese consortium is now testing a 100 kW fuel cell system in Tokyo. The system uses green hydrogen and waste plastic hydrogen to provide heat to an industrial building. The demonstration aims to establish an urban hydrogen energy utilization model that combines global and local hydrogen sources.

The mayor of Bilbao, Spain, has attributed the recent collapse of a local sports center’s roof to heavy rains and the presence of numerous solar panels, according to local news outlets.

Australia’s largest grid-connected urban microgrid has been officially commissioned with a new rooftop solar-powered system on Ikea’s store in Adelaide. It already delivers more than 70% of the store’s energy needs and provides grid support for the South Australian network.

About 70 Katahdin breed sheep were dropped off at the Oberlin College campus in Ohio last week. They will graze through mid-June, stomping grass and weeding the solar field in a move aimed at reducing operations and maintenance costs.

The perovskite solar race is heating up, with a cue of manufacturers forming to test products at the US Department of Energy’s (DoE) PV commercialization facilities, and academics on both sides of The Pond announcing new advances in recent months.

German investors have agreed to back a hydrogen project in Namibia, while Plug Power and Thyssenkrupp Nucera have announced separate hydrogen-related deals in Sweden.

A study conducted in the semi-arid weather conditions of Ben Guerir, Morocco, evaluated the performance of antistatic and hydrophobic coatings for photovoltaic solar panels. After nine months of operation, the PV panels with coatings developed by Portuguese company ChemiTek produced an average of 3% more energy than the uncoated ones.

China’s Eging has unveiled a new line of bifacial TOPCon solar panels based on n-type wafers and 182 mm cells. The modules have a temperature coefficient of -0.30% and efficiencies ranging from 21.67% to 22.45%.

In a new weekly update for pv magazine, Solcast, a DNV company, presents the solar irradiance data it collected for North America since early May. The province of Alberta saw close to 100 wildfires raging from the beginning of the month and solar asset operators throughout the impacted regions can expect reduced efficiency from both the irradiance impacts and increased panel soiling.