Belgium

Fusion Fuel Green has developed a small PEM electrolyzer that will be used in a green hydrogen project in Iberia. Elsewhere, India’s Adani Group and Canada-based PEM fuel cell producer Ballard Power Systems have signed a memorandum of understanding to evaluate a joint investment in the commercialization of hydrogen fuel cells for mobility and industrial applications in India.

As part of the EU Horizon 2020 CIRCUSOL project, Belgian PV installer and investor Futech investigated the technical and economic feasibility of integrating a second-life battery storage system at an existing 2MW solar plant in Belgium. The system originates from the automotive industry and was successfully commissioned in August 2021.

Through this operation, the French investment firm wants to help Ikaros Solar further develop its 300MW solar project pipeline.

Figures released by Eurostat this week indicated the monumental task facing the renewables industry as Europe attempts to replace a power source which generated a quarter of the bloc’s electricity in 2020.

Electric transmission company Elia Group noted a bigger slice of the generation mix occupied by nuclear last year, just hours after a London-based consultant said the nation was on track to switch off its reactors before 2026.

In the Belgian macro-region of Flanders, residential PV system owners that decided to install smart meters and abandon net metering are currently seeing their injection tariffs being paid at €0.11, up from just €0.03 in January. This gain adds to the high value of the kilowatt-hours they self-consume and it is helping them halve the payback time of their installations.

The n-type cell was built with phosphorus-doped LPCVD poly-Si passivating contacts and achieved a remarkable open-circuit voltage of 691.7 mV. According to its creators, with some adjustments the cell may be suitable for commercial production.

According to recent analysis by Belgian institute EnergyVille, rooftop PV and onshore wind have the technical potential to reach 118 GW of capacity in Belgium. Of the three Belgian macro-regions, Flemish-speaking Flanders is the one with the largest solar potential for rooftop systems, at 67.56 GW, followed by French-speaking Wallonia, with 31.54 GW, and the Brussels metropolitan region, with 4.23 GW.

The energy storage system, which is set to be up and running in around a year’s time, will be supplied by Finnish company Wärtsilä and will provide services including reserve power and frequency control response.

Industry association SolarPower Europe expects little change in the line-up of Europe’s biggest residential battery markets in four years’ time, with a rush of retrofits as turn-of-the-century solar feed-in tariffs begin to expire, set to keep Germany way ahead of the pack.