Technology and R&D

Scientists in the Netherlands have assessed how the so-called blue-green roofs can help reduce the operating temperature of rooftop PV panels and have found they provide a significant cooling effect. The irrigation system used for the research project relies on an additional water supply sourced from grey water from showers that is transformed into irrigation water.

In a new monthly column for pv magazine, the International Solar Energy Society (ISES) describes how regions that don’t experience waves larger than 6 m nor winds stronger than 15 m/s could generate up to one million TWh per year via offshore floating PV arrays. Most of the good sites are close to the equator, in and around Indonesia and tropical West Africa.

A UK-Chinese research group designed a dual-source heat pump (DSHP) that recovers the waste heat from the exhaust air along with absorbing the heat from the outdoor air. A prototype installed on the roof of a building in the UK showed remarkable results in terms of coefficient of performance and annual heating bill savings.

South Korean companies Posco and East-West Power are developing a new building-integrated solar photovoltaic solution. The new product uses special galvanized steel as the panel’s backside that Posco says lasts five to ten times longer than standard steel.

Synhelion’s solar tower technology harnesses energy from a field of solar mirrors and concentrates it onto a receiver. The receiver converts the solar radiation into high-temperature process heat, which is then directed to a thermal chemical reactor. This reactor produces syngas, which is a mixture of carbon monoxide (CO) and hydrogen (H2).

New research from Turkey shows the need for a more rigorous approach to PV site selection due to increasing hydrological extremes. The scientists claim that fixed-distance buffer zones are not sufficient to protect solar farms from flood and erosion hazards.

PV developers in Australia are being told to anticipate more frequent solar power fluctuation events, or “ramps,” which could potentially affect the stability of grid-connected solar power.

Scientists in the United States applied quantum computing techniques to the study of singlet fission – a little understood phenomenon that carries the potential to greatly increase solar cell efficiency. For now, the study reveals more about potential applications for quantum computing than for solar cells. But the techniques demonstrated could eventually helps scientists identify better materials for highly efficient solar cells.

New research has shown that Israel has the technical potential to deploy 172.5 GW of photovoltaics, of which 132.1 GW would be from conventional installations and 40 GW from agrivoltaics. If deployed, this full potential would require energy storage with a capacity of at least 500 GWh and strong development of vehicle-to-grid technologies.

Scientists in India have proposed to use solar modules at the end of their lifecycle as a building material for low-cost small housing units. With solar module recycling currently not viable economically, the researchers said their approach makes conventional solar panels into BIPV products without any modifications.