Technology and R&D

Solar Energy Expo 2026, Poland’s flagship PV-plus-storage trade fair, returned this month with a small show-floor footprint but a sharp focus on flexibility and market reform, as well as the storage, inverter and grid-forming technologies shaping the nation’s next phase of grid integration.

In all ages, humankind decided to spend considerable amounts of the available productivity on special monumental projects. Managing climate change and rebalancing within the planetary boundaries is such an activity. The enormous energetic productivity of solar PV may evolve as the central pillar to create a sustainable civilization.

Conceived for stationary energy storage, the proposed sodium-ion battery configuration relies on an P2-type cathode material and an hard carbon anode material that reportedly ensure full-cell performance. Electrochemical testing revealed initial capacities of 200 mAh/g for the cathode and 360 mAh/g for the anode with capacity retentions of 42% and 67.4% after 100 cycles.

Elon Musk told the World Economic Forum in Davos that the lowest-cost energy for AI could come from solar power generated in space. He also suggested that sparsely populated areas of Spain and Sicily could serve as Europe’s “power plants.”

Wood Mackenzie highlights a groundbreaking 5.2 GW solar-plus-storage project in the UAE capable of delivering 1 GW of continuous baseload power, signaling a potential shift in renewable energy deployment despite high costs. The report also forecasts strong global solar growth through 2030, including the rise of residential “balcony solar” in the U.S. and expanded solar shares in Asia Pacific and the U.S.

A research team from Osaka Metropolitan University have developed a donor-acceptor-donor molecule that can spontaneously self-assemble into nanoscale structures and offer a more stable route to built-in p/n heterojunctions in organic solar cells.

A Chinese-Swedish research team has boosted the performance of tin-lead perovskite solar cells by modifying additives and post-treatment processes. The device also demonstrated improved stability, retaining 60% of its initial efficiency after 550 hours at 85 °C under maximum power point conditions.

With silver prices rising, more large solar manufacturers are expected to switch to copper for cell metallization. Radovan Kopecek of ISC Konstanz tells pv magazine that he expects the entire industry to follow. Ning Song of the University of New South Wales says a small efficiency tradeoff may be acceptable if the cost savings are significant and do not introduce new reliability risks.

A report from McKinsey and Company says the relative ease of building out solar projects means the U.S and Europe are likely to meet their end-of-decade deployment targets, despite current pipeline gaps of around 205 GW and 181 GW.

Spanish tracker manufacturer Solar Steel has introduced an upgraded 2P single-row tracker designed to simplify assembly, improve standardization, and support deployment on complex terrain, including agrivoltaic projects.