Technology

CIGS thin film photovoltaic module developer, MiaSole has secured US$ 55 million in funding. The company says it will “aggressively” build the commercial part of its business.

Natcore Technology Inc. has opened its new solar research and development center today in Kodak’s Eastman business park in Rochester, the U.S. Flexible solar cells will be a key focus.

Australian dye-sensitized photovoltaics developer Dyesol, which is developing Dye Solar Cell (DSC) applications, has taken steps to sure up its share price. At the same time, the “father” of DSC has been awarded the 2012 Albert Einstein World Award of Science.

In what it claims is a world record, Japanese CIGS manufacturer Solar Frontier today announced that it has achieved an aperture are efficiency of 17.8 percent, on a 30cm by 30cm submodule. The record was achieved at the company’s Atsugi Research Center.

A new report looking at the building integrated photovoltaic (BIPV) glass market predicts that its market value will rise by at least 400 percent over the next five years. It also highlights the firms to watch and explains why Suntech could transform the market.

Australian scientists are working on a research project to network solar arrays across many roofs and households, into a “virtual power station”. The project hopes to improve the “predictability, quality and response” of power being put back into the local power grid.

A collaborative research project, based in the Australian state of Victoria, claims to have developed the world’s most efficient broadband nanoplasmonic solar cells. The result, published in the journal Nano Letters, report the cells having an efficiency of 8.1 per cent.

A new research project at the University of New South Wales (UNSW), is aiming to get photovoltaics applied in brave new ways and many more places. The project, at the Cooperative Research Centre (CRC) for Low-Carbon Living at UNSW, will focus on a range of techniques, applications and potential impediments relating to photovoltaic technology.

New research from the University of Cambridge in the U.K. is developing a method by which more of sun’s spectrum can be harnessed by a photovoltaic cell. In theory, the hybrid semiconductor method could push through the theoretical efficiency barrier limiting silicon solar cells.

The PV Legal project has found that while positive progress has been made in reducing bureaucratic barriers to photovoltaic implementation, there are still many in place, which continue to hinder development. Grid connection was highlighted as the biggest bottleneck.