California utilities commission sued for gouging rooftop solar payments
Three leading environmental groups have filed a petition to the California Court of Appeals to review the state’s solar net energy metering cuts.
Rimac Tech enters stationary energy storage with new tech, gigafactory plans
Croatian high-performance EV component supplier and car manufacturer Rimac Technology has developed a novel battery architecture that is said to reduce efficiency losses by up to 50% while decreasing the system footprint by up to 40% compared to current state-of-the-art solutions.
India’s IB Solar deploys new 400 MW solar module manufacturing line
The company’s director Abhinav Mahajan told pv magazine the new 400 MW solar panel production line will become operational by July this year. The facility can produce M10, half-cut, 144-cell modules.
Average silver price expected to drop 2% to $21.30 per ounce this year
The US Silver Institute’s “World Silver Survey 2022” report shows that the price of the metal will fall slightly this year despite increasing demand from the PV industry.
Strong revenue growth for biggest Chinese solar panel makers in Q1
JinkoSolar, Long, JA Solar, and Trina Solar have all reported impressive growth figures for the first quarter of this year.
Euro solar is Surfacing
M10 Solar Equipment, a German joint venture, may have shown Europe’s solar manufacturers how to scale their gigafactories by using Siemens’ plant simulation software to ramp up production of its innovative shingled-matrix solar cell production equipment, explains Tobias Wachtmann, director of global glass and solar for Siemens.
Germany, Netherlands and Sweden have lowest cost of capital for utility scale PV
The International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA) has released new data on the cost of capital for solar PV, onshore and offshore wind in the period between 2020 and 2021. Results show that Germany and the Netherlands have the lowest cost of capital in Europe at 2.2%, while the United States, China, India, and Australia show values of 5.4%, 3.9%, 7.1%, and 4.6%, respectively.
Construction begins on solar cycling path in Netherlands
The Dutch province of North Brabant will deploy a 500-meter-long solar bike line and test its performance over a 5-year period. The PV system will be integrated into the asphalt top layer and will consist of 600 solar panels of an unspecified type.
Solar module cooling tech based on nanofluid jets
The system consists of a double jet of nanofluid in a 2D channel placed below a heating plate that adheres to the photovoltaic panel. It uses water mixed with copper nanoparticles as a nanofluid.
First attempt to build UV-stable perovskite solar cells that harvest energy from ‘black lights’
A UK research group has fabricated perovskite solar cells that can harvest energy from near-ultraviolet (UV-A) indoor LED lights. The devices achieved an efficiency of 26.19%, an open-circuit voltage of 0.90V, a short-circuit current of 1.42 mA/cm2, and a fill factor of 77.56%, resulting in a maximum power output of 991.21 μW/cm2.
