Technology and R&D

The geothermal field beneath California’s Salton Sea contains brine that may hold from one to six million metric tons of lithium, an essential element for producing batteries. A Berkeley Lab study aims to evaluate the resource.

Fusion Fuel Green has developed a small PEM electrolyzer that will be used in a green hydrogen project in Iberia. Elsewhere, India’s Adani Group and Canada-based PEM fuel cell producer Ballard Power Systems have signed a memorandum of understanding to evaluate a joint investment in the commercialization of hydrogen fuel cells for mobility and industrial applications in India.

The pilot project is aimed at powering small electric aircraft. It is located in the southeast of England and was developed with 33 modules from Q-Cells.

French start-up Solar Cloth is planning to scale up capacity at its module production facility near Cannes. The factory will produce 17.6%-efficient flexible solar modules integrated into textile supports.

Grid bottlenecks are increasing in the northern Netherlands and solar project developers will see fewer chances to build PV facilities there.

Korean researchers have built a CISSe solar cell that can be used as a bottom cell for applications in tandem cells with a top cell based on perovskite. In the manufacturing process, they replaced the vacuum technology with air annealing and the result was a record-breaking efficiency combined with potential lower production costs.

The Q.Peak Duo XL-G11.3 panel is currently the largest and most powerful panel produced by the Korea-based manufacturer. It features a temperature coefficient of -0.34% per degree Celsius and comes with a 25-year linear performance warranty.

Conceived by scientists in China, the battery was built with a special hydrogel electrolyte made of polyacrylamide (PAM), zinc sulfate (ZnSO4), glycerol (GL), and acetonitrile (AN). The device showed high cycling stability of over 3,000 cycles, a high reversibility thanks to a Coulombic efficiency of up to 99.5%, and electrochemical performance of 185 mAh·g over 10,000 cycles.

The complex will combine a 50MW photovoltaic plant with 128MWh of long-term green hydrogen storage and batteries. The solar part is described by the company as an agrivoltaic plant that will host a herd of 1,830 sheep.

President Emmanuel Macron said agrivoltaics will become one of the main pillars of France’s energy system. Xavier Daval, chair of French solar commission SER-Soler, spoke with pv magazine about the recognition of the role of solar integrated into agricultural production.