Technology and R&D

As part of a new series of articles this summer, pv magazine revisits news from the PV sector of 10 years ago. The insights evoke memories while also providing a glimpse of what the solar landscape could look like in 2030.

Solar pre-cooling consists of using residential PV systems to run air conditioners to pre-cool residential and commercial buildings. It offers benefits in terms of mitigating low minimum demand in electricity networks, flattening the grid’s net demand profile, and reducing electricity bills.

A research team has developed OHP-based photoanodes for photoelectrochemical (PEC) water splitting, minimizing the usual limitations. Meanwhile, China released its first hydrogen guideline, and Germany announced €18.6 billion for the hydrogen industry. Finally, a German company finds out that hydrogen trains are more expensive than battery-operated vehicles.

Biwatt Power, a Chinese manufacturer, has developed new residential sodium-ion batteries with an efficiency rate of 97% and a projected lifespan of more than 3,000 cycles.

The University of Sevilla has designed a PV-powered “smart” canopy that activates a thermal conditioning system to reduce extreme heat by up to 20 C.

The port of Valencia, Spain, is assessing the performance a vertical PV wall featuring 21 solar modules, with 8.6 kW of total capacity. A successful pilot project could pave the way for a larger vertical PV system on the port’s breakwaters.

Octopus Energy has agreed to invest $89 million to scale up Kensa Group, a ground-source heat pump business, while KfW IPEX-Bank has agreed to provide $129.6 million of financing to German heat pump manufacturer Valliant.

Researchers in Taiwan are proposing a market-based incentive scheme to help property owners to move from using their roofs for illegal dwellings to rooftop solar power generation. They found these owners should be rewarded for solar power generation but also be compensated for the income loss due to the removal of illegal rentals.

A group of researchers in Egypt studied the use of partially submerged angle perforating fins (PSAPF) and solid fins (PSASF) to assess their ability to remove excess heat from floating photovoltaics under Mediterranean outdoor environments. The team found that the optimized PSAPF-FPV module achieved an LCOE of $0.068/kWh).

In its latest monthly column for pv magazine, the European Technology and Innovation Platform for Photovoltaics (ETIP PV) presents its Strategic Research and Innovation Agenda (SRIA), published in collaboration with the European Energy Research Alliance for PV (EERA-PV).