Technology and R&D

Rystad Energy says China appears set to smash its national hydrogen targets, solidifying its lead in the global electrolyzer market, while European Union and Japan have agreed to cooperate on hydrogen research.

FutureVoltaics says it has developed pre-assembled, reflector-based vertical rooftop PV systems. The systems feature 175 W heterojunction bifacial solar modules and special reflectors on both sides.

New testing conducted at France’s oldest PV system have shown that its solar modules can still provide performance values in line with what the manufacturers promised.

Intended for applications in utility scale PV projects, the new Hi-MO 9 module is available in eight versions with power output ranging from 625 W to 660 W and power conversion efficiency spanning from 23.1% to 24.4%.

The result was confirmed by Germany’s Institute for Solar Energy Research Hamelin (ISFH). The cell also achieved an open-circuit voltage of 709.5 mV, a short circuit density of 11,355 mA, and a fill factor of 82.04%.

Austrian researchers performed tests on thermoplastic polyolefin (TPO) encapsulant as an alternative to conventional ethylene vinyl acetate (EVA) copolymer and polyolefin elastomers (POE) to assess its use in glass-glass modules. They report that all of the TPO specimens outperformed EVA and POE, especially TPO-3.5 encasulants.

A research team in Australia has used a lamination technique known as cold isostatic pressing (CIP) to build a perovksite solar cell based on a flexible bilayer electrode made of carbon and silver that can reportedly compete with gold-carbon eletrode based counterparts in terms of efficiency and stability.

The German Aerospace Center (DLR) has created a solar atlas to identify rooftop PV potential in Germany. This new open-access online platform uses aerial photographs and geodata processed with machine-learning methods to determine solar energy potential for the country’s entire building stock of around 20 million units.

At a time of growing demand for battery energy storage, pv magazine spoke with Eloisa de Castro, CEO of Enerpoly, a Swedish company preparing to launch the world’s first zinc-ion battery megafactory on its home turf. Having solved rechargeability issues, the company expects its safe and sustainable zinc-ion batteries, which rely solely on a European supply chain, to increase their market share in the years to come.

Soren, the French environmental agency, has warned that uninstalled panels are often resold or exported through loosely regulated reuse channels, especially to developing countries.