Technology and R&D

In a new white paper, Chinese PV manufacturer JinkoSolar demonstrates how its latest ‘Tiger Neo’ module, featuring the 182mm n-type TOPCon cells, achieves lower energy costs. Based on total project costs for various scenarios in China, the Middle East and Europe, Jinko calculates advantages arising from both the cell technology and its chosen wafer format.

Meanwhile, on the Iberian Peninsula, H2 Green Steel (H2GS) and Iberdrola plan to establish a 1 GW green hydrogen production facility, and Acciona and Plug Power want to deploy green hydrogen facilities across Spain and Portugal.

With a new system for floating photovoltaic power plants, engineers from Germany want to make the application cheaper, higher-yielding, and safer. The result is somewhat reminiscent of a pufferfish, which also gave the system its name.

A German-Italian research team has designed an inverted perovskite solar cell with a short-circuit current of 1.184 V and a remarkable fill factor of 85%. The device was built by modifying its interfaces with large organic cations.

Scientists in the United States turned to artificial intelligence to speed up their search for new materials for use in a flow battery. The group developed a machine learning algorithm that could search a dataset of potential materials and identify those with the ideal balance of different characteristics that make it suitable for use in a flow batteries. The group says its algorithm could be applied to other battery technologies, and even in other fields.

Developed by scientists in Turkey, a system prototype has operated at lower PV module temperatures and removed most of the dust accumulation. The researchers are now planning to improve the device by applying MPPT converter topologies.

There is still much to debate over the benefits of moving a vehicle via solar, but the market has been getting creative and is evolving quickly.

Scientists in China have used a fused-thiophene spacer to build a two-dimensional perovskite solar cell. It has an open-circuit voltage of 1.03 V, a short circuit current of 22.38 mA cm2, and a fill factor of 81.64%.

MIT researchers have created a semisolid flow battery that might be able to outperform lithium-ion and vanadium redox flow batteries. It features a new electrode made of dispersed manganese dioxide particles shot through with an electrically conductive additive, carbon black.

Malta announced a partnership with Betchel to deploy electro-thermal energy storage systems that are capable of durations of 10-150+ hours.