Technology

Trane has released a rooftop air-to-air heat pump that can produce between 14.5 kW and 37.4 kW of heat and between 16.5 kW and 38.4 kW of cooling. The new device can purportedly be adapted to cold-climate applications by adding complementary heating sources such as electric heaters or hot water coils.

French developer Valeco has deployed an agrivoltaic installation on a fodder field and has found out it offers benefits for the quality and quantity of the crop, as well as for sheep grazing under the solar panels.

China’s Deye has developed a new lithium iron phosphate battery system with a nominal voltage of 51.2 V. It says that up to 32 modules with a capacity of 6.14 kWh can be stacked and connected in parallel for a total capacity of 196.48 kWh.

A research group in China has designed a perovskite solar cell with a new ligand known as 3-amidinopyridine. These molecules are reportedly able to efficiently reduce anion vacancy defects, thus ensuring higher power conversion efficiency and remarkable stability.

South Korean researchers have developed a heat trading system including a ground-source heat pump, solar thermal collectors, a fuel-cell system, and two heat storage tanks for district heating at hours of peak solar production.

With calls for a revival in European PV manufacturing becoming more urgent, the Environmental, Social, and Governance credentials of its PV producers are being touted as a way in which manufacturing can be supported or even protected. The case for the ESG credentials of European manufacturing was advanced by multiple speakers at the 2023 SolarPower Summit this week in Brussels.

Netze BW has increased the amount of hydrogen it is injecting into the regional grid of Oehringen, in the southwest of Germany, from 20% to 30%. pv magazine spoke with the project leader, Heike Grüner, about the next phases of the project.

Tractebel, DEME, and Jan De Nul will deploy a pilot offshore floating PV facility off the Belgian coast in the summer. The Seavolt floating platform is reportedly able to withstand difficult offshore conditions.

Brazilian scientists have calculated the potential for floating solar generation in Brazil. The results show an installed potential of 43 GW for all of Brazil, with the state of Minas Gerais leading with 6 GW, followed by Bahia with 4.59 GW, and Sao Paulo with 3.87 GW.

Scientists in China have fabricated a Ruddlesden-Popper perovskite solar cell based on γ-aminobutyric acid (GABA) as the organic spacer cation. They claim this innovation offers higher power conversion efficiency and outstanding stability.