Technology and R&D

Elsewhere, Lotte Chemical and Air Liquid Korea will establish a joint venture to build a hydrogen supply chain in South Korea and the US Department’s Loan Programs Office (LPO) offered a conditional commitment for a US$504.4M loan guarantee to the Advanced Clean Energy Storage Project in Utah, which combines alkaline electrolysis with salt cavern storage for grid scale energy conversion and storage using hydrogen as the energy carrier.

Scientists in Switzerland made significant progress with an approach to perovskite-silicon tandem cell design that they say could eventually be integrated into existing silicon PV manufacturing. They have announced the achievement of a 29.2% cell efficiency – not far from the overall record for tandem cells, and verified by Germany’s Fraunhofer ISE.

In other news, BYD’s quarterly profit is up by 241% buoyed by demand for battery-powered cars, Ford takes a US$3.1 billion loss on its Rivian stake and cuts 580 jobs as part of corporate restructuring, and ABB agrees to provide its full portfolio of EV charging technology to Shell.

German startup Nexol has developed a photovoltaic water heating system that relies on a smart controller, with either DC and AC power. It decides autonomously if grid electricity or PV is used, with the latter always preferred.

Switzerland’s Energy Vault will support Indian state-run power producer NTPC by deploying its gravity-based energy storage technology and software solutions.

Researchers at the University of Genoa have conducted a techno-economic analysis to assess green hydrogen produced via water electrolysis and its conversion into three alternative fuels – methane, methanol, and ammonia. They looked into efficiency, storage capacity, annual costs, and production costs of the different fuels, which they found to be significantly higher than market reference values.

Japan’s Kopel has developed a device with a thickness of just 1.2 mm, with contacts on all of the finger electrodes of busbar-less solar cells.

Scientists in Germany and Switzerland have developed a perovskite solar cell with a carbon electrode that achieved 18.5% efficiency. It also retained 82% of this after 500 hours of continuous illumination. While a long way behind what has been achieved with other perovskite solar devices, the cell is produced via all low-temperature processes that could likely be scaled into low-cost, large-scale manufacturing – making the approach one worth pursuing further.

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.