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A U.K. research team has developed a desalination mechanism that could offer a new way to provide drinking water and irrigate remote areas affected by natural disasters. Although the portable device is still in an initial, experimental phase, it can be powered by solar energy, as it has no moving parts and only requires small amounts of electricity.

The country’s cumulative installed PV capacity reached 4.82 GW at the end of 2019. Most of last year’s new PV additions were rooftop projects, but Engie also started up a 100 MW solar park.

Algerian telecoms and renewable energy company Milltech is planning to begin producing panels at a new factory next month. The modules made there will chiefly be distributed in Algeria but the company also hopes to export.

Toshiba has finalized construction of a 10 MW hydrogen plant in Fukushima prefecture which draws power from 20 MW of solar generation capacity as well as the grid.

By tweaking the chemical composition of the material to create a ‘triple’ perovskite, scientists at the U.S. National Renewable Energy Laboratory say they have overcome one of the technology’s inherent stability issues and fabricated a perovskite cell which achieved 27% efficiency in a tandem format with a silicon device.

The 8 MW facility has been developed by a cement producer to supply around 10% of the annual electricity needs of its nearby factory. Under subsidy-free rules, the power will be bought by the Electricity Authority of Cyprus for the average price it would have paid if the electricity had come from fossil fuels.

The device exhibited a small performance loss after a 400-hour thermal stability test at 85 degrees Celsius and after the same period under maximum power point tracking at 40 degrees Celsius, according to its developer. The cell was made by combining solution-processed, micrometer-thick perovskite top cells with fully-textured silicon heterojunction bottom cells.

Sri Lanka’s Ceylon Electricity Board is seeking proposals for 20 solar power projects ranging in size from 3 MW to 10 MW. The projects are part of the third phase of the ‘Soorya Bala Sangramaya’ (Battle for Solar Energy) program.

The list of bidders includes companies and consortia from all over the world, suggesting that the procurement of large-scale solar is becoming increasingly competitive at a global level. The 200 MW solar park will be built in Sherabad, in southeastern Uzbekistan’s Surkhandarya region.

Developers are also expected to drag their heels over project completion during the first half of the year as the safeguarding duty applied to imported Chinese and Malaysian solar products is due to expire at the end of July.