Passive solar module cooling tech based on atmospheric water harvesting
Researchers in India have developed a cooling technology that uses calcium chloride for atmospheric water harvesting. The system reportedly improves PV module yields by up to 18%.
New utility software to steer homeowner energy systems, enable load trading
Austrian startup Podero has launched software to enable utilities to roll out new residential services via its home energy device steering and trading solutions.
Smart Pension invests GBP 330 million in Octopus Energy clean-tech funds
UK workplace pension provider Smart Pension has announced an initial GBP 330 million ($440 million) strategic investment in Octopus Energy Generation. The renewables arm of Octopus Energy invests in solar, wind and energy storage projects, as well as clean energy technologies such as heat pumps.
A better understanding of UV degradation
Performance loss from ultraviolet (UV) light has become a concern for new PV cells, though earlier lab tests may have overstated the issue. Paul Gebhardt, photovoltaic module reliability scientist at Fraunhofer Institute for Solar Energy Systems (ISE), outlines a mechanism that may have distorted earlier results.
PV module fault diagnosis uses convolutional neural network
Researchers in China have created a dataset of various PV faults and normalized it to accommodate different array sizes and typologies. After testing the new approach in combination with the 1D-CNN machine learning technique under different conditions, they found an accuracy of more than 99%.
Power Roll tests perovskite solar panels outdoors
Power Roll, a UK developer of perovskite solar technology, has begun outdoor testing of its 600 mm x 400 mm flexible modules.
Cooling PV inverters with skived fin heat sink
Researchers in Turkey tested a novel heat sink design to cool insulated gate bipolar transistor (IGBT) arrays in solar inverters. They found that it reduced module temperatures by more than 6 C in lab experiments.
PV-powered liquid air system yields hydrogen, heating, fresh water
A global scientific team has designed a novel multigeneration system based on renewable energy and liquid air energy storage, then used soft computing techniques to optimize its operation. The optimized levelized costs of hydrogen (LCoH) were $1.52/kg and $5.22/m³.
Vending machine trial with chalcopyrite solar
PXP Corp. and Suntory Holdings, both based in Japan, have begun to test the practicality and performance of a vending machine equipped with PXP’s lightweight, glass-free solar panels in Sagamihara, Japan.
Surplus PV for electric delivery vehicles
Scientists in Japan have developed a model that predicts surplus PV generation and creates a route for optimized charging of electric delivery vehicles. They defined their work as a “practical blueprint for logistics operators.”
