Technology and R&D

The contest is over. Faster, cheaper, more flexible than gas turbines – battery energy storage must be the future peaking energy service provider of choice, according to a new paper by Australia’s Clean Energy Council.

The result was achieved for a small area device with the size of 0.1 sq cm. The cell was fabricated with a Tin(IV) oxide electron transport layer modified with crystalline polymeric carbon nitrides (cPCN).

Scientists have found that a human hair derivative can protect, stabilize and enhance the performance of perovskite solar cells.

The nascent hydrogen economy has seen a good amount of developments in a week that showed an increasing number of players taking part in the game. In the UK, British Airways has invested in hydrogen-electric aircraft developer ZeroAvia with a focus on hydrogen-electric power solutions for 50-plus-seat aircraft. In Brazil, Petrobras has joined forces with Siemens to develop green hydrogen solutions. In Portugal, the government and the European Investment Bank signed a non-binding memorandum of understanding for hydrogen cooperation.

A German consortium is building a light commercial truck prototype powered by 10 PV modules featuring Meyer Burger’s heterojunction cells. Initial estimates suggest that the panels could cover more than 25% of a vehicle’s total annual driving distance, and researcher Robby Peibst told pv magazine that the vehicle-integrated photovoltaic market could hit 5 GW by 2030.

Indian scientists tested four kinds of phase change materials (PCMs) for solar module cooling in building-integrated photovoltaics. The PCMs were encapsulated with the PV system and the building envelopes and were also found to be beneficial to the thermal comfort inside the buildings.

Australian public transport operator Transdev will use a “green mobility megawall” comprising 250 solar modules and 10 Tesla Powerwall units to charge two new electric buses in Brisbane.

A homegrown technology developed by the University of Newcastle and Southern Green Gas has seen the development of a novel green hydrogen fuel and carbon-neutral green methane. The fuel was demonstrated in Hyundai’s Nexo hydrogen fuel cell SUV in Sydney.

The New York Power Authority will deploy a battery to provide peak shaving capability. It aims to validate the system’s performance reliability to help determine O&M and life-cycle costs.

Scientists in Russia introduce a promising new material for battery energy storage, the product of more than three years of research. Incorporating a nickel-salen polymer into the cathode, the group demonstrated a battery that can charge and discharge ten times faster than today’s lithium-ion batteries. And though the battery still lags in terms of overall capacity, the group is confident that its discovery will lead to big improvements for lithium batteries.