Technology and R&D

The Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO) and Adelaide-based laser supplier Lastek are developing equipment and procedures to accurately measure the performance of multi-junction solar cells with the help of an LED-based solar simulator.

A 10,000-liters-per-day plant in Tamil Nadu offers hope for powering clean water without fossil fuels. However, researchers warn the technology is difficult to scale up because PV panels take up so much space.

The result was certified by the solar cells laboratory at the calibration and test center of Germany’s Institute for Solar Energy Research. Imec’s measurements showed cell bifaciality surpassed 80%.

With competition on the module market as cutthroat as ever, manufacturers are increasingly looking to emphasize the quality and reliability of their products and services as a differentiator. pv magazine investigates what’s behind some of these claims, and the move from manufacturers to more sophisticated quality assurance methods.

Celebrating its one year anniversary during Solarex, Turkish monitoring and AI startup Solarify is looking to reduce false alarms from utility scale PV projects. Based out of an incubator in Ege University in the coastal city of Izmir, Solarify is on the hunt for international partners.

Messe Düsseldorf has partnered with pv magazine for a special publication for Energy Storage Europe 2019. As part of the project, we tasked an independent jury of experts to rank a range of Energy Storage Highlights that were exhibited at the event. During the show, our editors caught up with the top five entries to get a bit of an insight.

The global market for solar trackers expanded by 20% in 2018, with total international shipments spiking 36% year-on-year to surpass the 20 GW mark, according to a new report by Wood Mackenzie. NEXTracker and Array Technologies maintained their industry dominance, but a number of smaller competitors claimed a greater share of the global market in the 12 months to the end of December than ever before.

A European research team working on the EU-funded EURAMET ENG55 “PhotoClass” project has taken a step toward standardizing the measurement of the relative temperature dependence of the short-circuit current in different PV devices, although it applied completely different approaches.

Scientists at MIT have developed a new type of “hybrid” cathode for lithium batteries, which they say could increase their energy density beyond that of current commercial lithium-ion battery designs.

University of Groningen in the Netherlands is adding its name to the growing list of research institutes that have developed an “industrially scalable” technique for the production of perovskite solar cells. In a separate publication, Russian scientists have reviewed the suitability of one group of perovskite materials for use in space.