Technology and R&D

Kaneka said the cells will be utilized in the roof glass of Toyota’s Prius PHEV electric car. It plans to begin full-scale delivery of in-vehicle PV products this year.

An international research team has presented all possible system designs and applications for photovoltaic-thermal (PVT) technology. Their review includes conventional PV-T collectors, air-based systems, liquid-based installations, water-based collectors, refrigerant-based systems, heat-pipe-based technologies, dual air-water systems, building-integrated PVT arrays, and concentrated PVT collectors.

Researchers in China have built a hole transport layer with a mixed binary configuration integrating the polymer Regioregular poly(3-hexylthiophene) (P3HT) and Spiro-OMeTAD. They used it to build a perovskite solar cell that was able to retain 90% of its initial efficiency after 1,200 hours of storage in dark ambient environment.

Brenmiller secured a €7.5 million ($8.2 million) credit facility from the European Investment Bank (EIB) to build the factory.

The Renewable Energy Test Center (RETC) raised the issue of ultraviolet-induced degradation of the trending technology in its PV Module Index 2022.

Researchers from Switzerland’s École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne have unveiled a new solar dish plant design, while Plug Power has delivered its first electrolyzer system to Europe.

LG has developed a new energy storage system for the US residential market that combines two 10-hour batteries or 16-hour Prime battery modules in parallel, providing 19.2 kWh to 32 kWh of capacity and a maximum 9.6 kW output from the inverter.

Indian scientists have created a hybrid power exploitability index to identify optimal locations for constructing new solar and wind hybrid power plants. They have evaluated retrofitting existing standalone plants and have discovered that all but one of the eight plants could be hybridized, with up to a 400% annual increase in power output.

Irish researchers have created a mobile app that calculates the best route for solar-powered vehicles based on user preferences for time and energy efficiency. The app’s experiment predicted the most energy-absorbing route with 51.65% accuracy and chose the most energy-consuming route with 86.65% accuracy.

Mauritian researchers have developed a solar tracker prototype that increases current by around 37%. The device uses a simplified and mechanical tracking system.