Technology and R&D

France’s environmental agency Ademe has released a set of new guidelines that clearly define “agrivoltaics.”

A UK consortium has developed the Prisma system, which stores thermal energy in liquid air form to provide onsite compressed air, via a latent energy cold storage tank filled with a phase-change material. It is expected to have a levelized cost of storage of GBP 114 ($143.10)/MWh.

Solar might be more efficient than nuclear energy to supply power for a six-person extended mission to Mars that will involve a 480-day stay on the planet’s surface before returning to Earth, according to new US research.

The device is described as a heat engine with no moving parts that is able to produce power from a heat source of between 1,900 to 2,400 C. This concept is known as thermal energy grid storage (TEGS) and consists of a low-cost, grid-scale storage technology that uses thermophotovoltaic cells to convert heat to electricity above 2,000 C.

The proposed system architecture is claimed to offer more stability compared to conventional floating structures and reduces by up to 93% the contact area of the system with the water. The first system prototype was recently developed on a water reservoir in Alava, in the northeastern territory of the Basque Country.

Bromine-based flow batteries have the potential for high energy density in renewable energy storage. Their commercial adoption, however, remains challenging due to the cathode materials used for their construction. New research from China seeks to shed light on how to overcome these hurdles.

Fire crews in Chandler, Arizona, sent robots into a building at the Salt River Project where a 10 MW battery was smoldering.

The lead-free solar cell was modeled via a three-dimensional finite element method by an Iranian research group. The cell was designed without the buffer layer and with the addition of anti-reflection layer (ARL) strategies, as well as the use of periodic nano-texture patterns.

Manufacturing giant JinkoSolar has set another world record for n-type solar cell efficiencies with its TOPCon technology, this time pushing to 25.7%. The new world record was confirmed by China’s National Institute of Metrology.

In other news, Hydrofuel Canada developed hollow hybrid plasmonic nanocages to create an electrocatalyst for ammonia synthesis from nitrogen (N2) and water (H2O) and said green hydrogen could be separated from this ammonia and sold at about $1.50 per kilogram. Furthermore, Norway’s Aker Horizons and Statkraft are exploring green hydrogen and ammonia production opportunities in India and Brazil, targeting local steel and fertilizer industries.