Technology

Germany has brought a 17 MW photovoltaic carport online in Riedstadt, Hesse, spanning 76,000 square meters. It is expected to generate about 17 GWh per year, according to project developer Nawasol.

A report from the Clean Energy Technology Observatory finds that while the EU is a technology leader in PV inverters, trackers and mounting structures, its manufacturing capacity in solar ingots, wafers, cells and modules falls far behind targets set by the Net Zero Industry Act.

German solar wafer manufacturer Nexwafe is one of eight companies receiving investment in the latest round of the European Commission’s Strategic Technologies for Europe Platform (STEP) Scale Up call, an initiative addressing a market gap in deep tech funding in Europe.

The China-based organic photovoltaics manufacturer has launched a line of indoor PV modules suitable for integration into digital office products and electronic devices.

Researchers in the United States have developed a photonic curing technique using laser sintering to rapidly heat and cure copper pastes on temperature-sensitive solar cell substrates without causing thermal stress. The process purportedly produces dense, low-porosity copper layers with strong adhesion to indium tin oxide, achieving low bulk and contact resistivity.

Naturgy and BlueNewables are developing a 1 MW floating solar installation off Spain’s Mediterranean coast, with two 500 kW units designed for open-sea operation and scheduled to begin testing in 2026.

A research team led by Washington State University has developed a cloud-based system for trading and sharing energy from solar panels and batteries within a neighbourhood. The concept displayed potential energy cost savings of around 12% over a five-day test period.

Only months after inaugurating the world’s largest sand battery – a 1 MW/100 MWh thermal storage system – Polar Night has committed to building a project twice its size.

A research team in Spain has built what it claims to be the world’s most efficient perovskite solar cell using MXenes or any other type of 2D-materials. The device relies on a Mxene interlayer that suppresses non-radiative recombination and improved charge extraction at the interface between the perovskite absorber and the electron transport layer.

Scientists in China have proposed a novel scheduling framework for microgrids based on hybrid PV and a small modular nuclear reactors. The framework uses multi-objective distributionally robust optimization with a real-time reinforcement learning mechanism and is reportedly able to reduce operational costs by 18.7%.