Technology and R&D

New research from the Netherlands showed that renewables and short-term storage can meet around 92.5% of Europe’s electricity demand in future energy scenarios, with the remaining 7.5% being satisfied by green hydrogen. The scientists considered Europe as fully self-sufficient with zero import-export of power or hydrogen, with each of the 37 countries included in the modeling having a self-sufficiency rate of at least 80%.

Researchers in Germany have shown that heterojunction solar cells screen printed with silver-copper on the front side and silver paste on the rear side can achieve a 0.13% efficiency gain over reference screen-printed bifacial cells based on silver alone. The research group worked specifically on dispensing and screen printing as printing methods.

Engineers at Monash University in Australia have developed a new catalyst they say could bring zinc-air batteries “closer to real-world, grid-scale and transport uses.”

Urbanpv has developed a timber-framed 46 kW parking lot design for ten parking spaces including the access lane.

Researchers in India have developed two solar tracker optimization techniques can purportedly increase power generation by up to 54.36% when combined. One uses a light sensor and the other relies on data from GPS and a real-time clock.

Spanish startup Nomad Solar Energy and Full&fast have deployed a portable solar-plus-storage system at a Madrid farm to provide off-grid power for irrigation.

The German company is introducing its own heat pump with a heating output of up to 16 kW and a maximum flow temperature of 80 C. The system is designed to meet rising demand in large single-family homes and unrenovated existing buildings.

Scientists in China have created an optimization technique for an electric vehicle charging station that uses PV, battery storage, and a vehicle-to-grid operation. Considering the uncertainty of PV generation and the randomness of EV load, the system uses two-level optimization, day-ahead and intra-day.

The cell was fabricated with a 2.3 nm-thin layer of gallium oxide, a silver busbar aimed at improving charge collection and silicon nitride anti-reflection coating. It was encapsulated within a watertight 3D-printed box to ensure impermeability.

A Slovak research team has developed a mathematical model for determining the optimum tilt angle of a solar system ranging from 0° to 90°. Their framework was tested on an experimental setup in Czechia and attained 93.9% accuracy in predicting the system’s energy balance.