Technology and R&D

Vermont Governor Phil Scott and Senator Peter Welch attended the groundbreaking for a new microgrid neighborhood in South Burlington, Vermont, that will put solar on every home and an electric-vehicle charger in every garage.

US-based manufacturer Source Global has introduced a solar module technology that can produce drinking water from as little as 10% humidity in the air. The company says that its optimized technology can produce water in a range of conditions.

Acciona has completed a 1.5 MW solar plant that powers an irrigation system covering 3,400 hectares in northeastern Spain, serving 150 irrigators. The company will supply water to local farmers under a 26-year contract.

Fraunhofer ISE is leading a project that is developing methods to characterize perovskite-based tandem modules, in an effort to facilitate their industrial implementation. A specially built Wavelabs solar simulator is now being used at the institute’s CalLab PV Modules. 

The State Research Institute for Viticulture and Pomiculture (LVWO) in Baden-Württemberg, Germany, has started generating electricity and cultivating berries in a pilot plant. Separately, a project combining agrivoltaics with apple cultivation in Austria has also shown promising initial results.

Soltec says its new algorithm optimizes tracker positioning by considering both frontal and rear radiation, resulting in a production increase of up to 0.30%.

NASA has discovered that perovskite solar cells tested in space exhibit less degradation than reference devices tested on Earth. The agency acknowledged that it is uncertain about the specific factors in the space environment that contributed to the superior performance of the perovskite absorber film.

Beny New Energy’s latest module-level rapid shutdown solution is UL certified and SunSpec certified. It says the new tech is designed for a range of PV systems, including residential, commercial, and large-scale arrays.

Sinexcel’s new inverters offer an efficiency rating of 97.5% to 98.0% and a European efficiency range of 97.2% to 97.5%.

Researchers at India’s National Institute of Technology (NIT) Silchar, Assam, have designed a formamidinium tin iodide (FASnI3) active layer-based perovskite solar cell. It could potentially achieve a power conversion efficiency of 31.57%, while also scoring well on other performance parameters.