Technology

Scientists in China demonstrated a process to “heal” defects in a perovskite film by using an ammonia treatment after the film is formed through a solvent process. Small solar cells made using these films achieved maximum efficiency of 23.21%, while a mini-module with a 14-square-centimeter active surface area reached 20.61%.

LevelTen Energy, a renewables transaction infrastructure company, has launched a new platform to simplify and accelerate power purchase agreement market analysis. The new platform, MarketPulse, provides 24/7 access to PPA price data, renewable energy project data, and analytics. 

In a study that began in 2016, US scientists purchased 834 PV modules, representing seven manufacturers and 13 module types, and installed them in various climate conditions to observe their performance over time. The results show that, while plenty of opportunities still exist to extend module lifetimes and reduce performance loss in the field, reductions in the manufacturing cost of PV have not come with an increase in their degradation rate.

Researchers at the Gwangju Institute of Science and Technology (GIST) have developed a broadly applicable and versatile post-electrode-engineering process. It can be applied to a range of conventional anodes to improve their stability.

Hype and hope for solid-state batteries (SSBs) continues to grow as industries from automotive to storage bet big on the technology. Leading battery manufacturers and a roll call of start-ups are jostling to get from lab to fab. The reality of SSBs is in question though. As Marija Maisch reports, the window of opportunity for the decades-old technology to make the next big step toward commercialization is now.

UK researchers have revealed that gaseous hydrogen could cause problems in natural gas pipelines, while electrolyzer manufacturer Nel has announced plans to build a second production line in Norway.

A new report form analysts at IHS Markit notes that the market for module-level power electronics (MLPE) grew by 33% between 2019 and 2021, with around one-third of new residential solar installations now taking advantage of MLPE’s promise of improved safety, energy yield and fault detection. And with smaller, distributed generation systems expected to represent 43% of global PV installations between now and 2025, the opportunity for MLPE will only get larger.

Scientists in Japan have developed black glasses grafted silicon microparticles as a negative electrode material to improve lithium-ion battery performance.

Scientists at Germany’s Fraunhofer Institute for Solar Energy Systems (ISE) have investigated gallium-doping in p-type silicon wafers as a route to better performance. Testing these specially produced p-type wafers in TOPCon and heterojunction cell architectures, which several major PV cell manufacturers are gearing up to produce on more expensive n-type wafers, the scientists found that with gallium doping, the p-type wafers can achieve similar or even better cell efficiencies compared to those made so far with n-type wafers.

An international group of researchers from 15 universities has said that there is growing consensus among scientists that an energy system based on 100% renewables could be achieved cost effectively by 2050.