Technology and R&D

Two different technological developments were announced this week for concentrated solar power technology. In Australia, a consortium led by Vast Solar filed a patent for a new tank design for thermal energy storage systems. And in the United States, Heliogen announced the rollout of robots to install and clean projects.

Scientists in the United States developed a computer simulator that can calculate the conversion efficiency of different solar cell materials and configurations – helping to guide research and optimization of new cell designs. The simulator is available to researchers as an open-source tool to save time and spot the best opportunities for optimization of any given approach.

Conceived by a Dutch consortium, according to Design for Recycling guidelines, the panel is being developed with two different encapsulants, one for the front of the module, which joins the glass and cells together; and a slightly different formulation for the back of the module, which attaches cells and backsheet together.

Sodium batteries, an increasingly competitive area of research, have emerged as a low-cost, lithium-free energy storage alternative based on abundant, more environmentally friendly materials. A pair of new research papers addresses some of the remaining hurdles to widespread adoption, such as the formation of dendrites on the anode.

Stanford scientists have fabricated a transition metal dichalcogenide (TMD) solar cell that is claimed to overcome the typical issue of this kind of PV device, the so-called Fermi-level pinning. They used graphene contacts to mitigate this phenomenon and achieved a record power per weight of 4.4 W/g.

Midsummer and Medacciai are developing a BIPV solution for curved metal roofs in southern European markets, through a five-year deal.

New research from Stanford University professor Mark Jacobson seeks to remove any doubts about grid stability in a world powered entirely by renewable energy. The latest study models 100% wind water and solar powered grids across the United States, finding no risk of blackouts in any region and also broad benefits in cost reduction, job creation and land use.

Developed by U.S. researchers, the proposed coating solution is claimed to effectively melt ice and snow with temperatures down to -35 degrees Celsius. It was fabricated by using medium-chain triglyceride oil to plasticize two common industrial polymer polyvinyl chlorides and tested at a pilot facility in Alaska.

A German-U.S. research group has proposed a new model to treat PV installations as permanent assets, with maintenance being performed at regular intervals. Through the new metric, it found more convenient to operate a module with 0.5% annual degradation for 35 years, and a module with 0.2% degradation, for 50 years.

NASA’s Double Asteroid Redirection Test mission will roll out solar arrays and an electric propulsion system to redirect Earth-bound asteroids.