Technology and R&D

The use of ultrasonic sound waves has been applied to battery recovery. Researchers from the ReLiB project at the U.K.’s Faraday Institution say the process has already proven to be 100 times faster than conventional approaches. It is also much more sustainable and less energy intensive.

Innovations in green hydrogen are developing at a fast pace. This presents new questions like where are the markets, how fast will they come, how can we ensure hydrogen is green and cost-efficient, and what needs to be considered by project developers when planning related business models? And, at the end, will there be an opportunity for market players coming from the solar sphere? Watch our final Roundtable Europe video to find out.

Proper recycling strategies for perovskite modules could ensure sustainability and improve energy payback times, according to US researchers. They claim that the best recycled perovskite cell architecture could produce an energy payback time of about one month, versus 1.3 to 2.4 years for crystalline silicon modules.

Researchers from Hong Kong have applied a novel charge-reinforced, ion-selective (CRIS) membrane to a polysulfide-iodide redox flow battery they had built in 2016. The redox flow battery showed a capacity decay rate of just 0.005% per day for 1,200 cycles, and a lifetime with over 2,000 hours’ cycling, which the academics said corresponds to approximately three months.

The NewMotion electric vehicle (EV) charging business owned by Anglo-Dutch energy giant Shell has become the first such entity to obtain a licence to provide grid balancing services in the Netherlands. Dutch grid company Tennet has licensed NewMotion to provide megawatt-scale balancing services to maintain grid frequency at 50 Hz by varying the rate at […]

Australian company ClearVue Technologies says it has a fully transparent, scalable, industry-ready solar window in production. It claims that it’s now just 18 months away from cracking 5% efficiency, thanks to a research partnership.

German project developer Svevind Energy and Kazakh Invest wants to build a 45 GW green hydrogen complex in Kazakhstan. Norwegian companies Equinor, Aker Group and Saga Pure announced separate plans to further develop their green hydrogen solution.

France’s Revolt Energy Green has developed a flexible solar+storage solution for one-off events, construction sites, and different kinds of off-grid applications. It has also developed a mobile hydrogen solution.

The device has a maximum power output of 6 kW and a storage capacity of 8.2 kWh. The product comes with IP65 protection and its operation is guaranteed for 10,000 cycles.

A floating PV array coupled to flow batteries is planned to power the operations of a new road under construction to connect two highways in the Netherlands. The project is aimed, in particular, at powering ventilation, lighting, and other installations of a tunnel.