Technology and R&D

Three Sixty Solar, a commercial and utility-scale solar developer, published a report this week that provides background on its vertically mounted solar system’s initial 16 months in operation.

The remote town of William Creek in the Australian outback is now entirely powered by solar backed by a battery energy storage system, after the switch was flicked on a 200 kW PV array that eliminates the need for diesel generation.

Viessmann has developed a heat pump for residential applications that can produce between 5.8 kW to 10.4 kW of heat. It has the capacity to heat 220 liters of domestic water, with a coefficient of performance (COP) of up to 4.8 for space heating and 3.14 for water heating.

Aurora Solar offers guidelines to make the most of a solar installation by avoiding losses.

A UK-Australian research group has built an intermediate band solar cell with a quantum ratchet semiconductor nanostructure that reportedly increases the ratchet band state lifetime of the device. Their new design builds on a cell structure known as the Vaquero–Stainer Device (VSD).

An international team has developed a numerical model that calculates how much groundwater can be pumped by PV systems of different sizes across the entire African continent. The results show that larger PV systems do not always pump the highest volume of water.

Adolf Goetzberger, the founder of the Fraunhofer Institute for Solar Energy Systems ISE and an early proponent of photovoltaics, passed away on Feb. 24 at the age of 94.

Italy’s FuturaSun has developed new bifacial double-glass PV modules based on n-type heterojunction (HJT) half-cut multi-busbar solar cells. The Velvet Pro line features M6 cells with power ratings ranging from 380 W to 480 W for rooftop applications. The Velvet Premium line features M12 cells, with power ratings from 615 W to 700 W for large-scale applications.

The US National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) has certified that a South Korean research team has achieved a 25.73% efficiency rating with a perovskite PV cell based on alkylammonium chlorides. The champion device built by the scientists reached an efficiency of 26.08%.

Scientists in Austria have examined the impact of different backsheet and encapsulant material combinations on module performance and degradation. This led them to develop a model to quantify the degradation rates of different materials, potentially helping manufacturers to identify better, longer-lasting materials for these vital module components.