China

Conceived by scientists in China, the pavement was built with a transparent resin-concrete material and amorphous silicon solar panels. Its performance and payback time are still far from bringing it closer to commercial production but its creators say viability may be reached with further improvements.

The Chinese module manufacturer saw its sales and turnover increase significantly in the past financial year. The company said it is benefiting from increasing demand for n-type products worldwide, and also for distributed generation systems, with which higher returns can be achieved.

Elsewhere, Longi will buy 203,600 tons of polysilicon from Chinese Tongwei, and the Chint Group is planning to deploy 1.6GW of distributed solar across four provinces.

Researchers in China have estimated the effects of utility scale solar parks built on fisheries and have found these facilities have an “unobvious” heating effect on the surrounding environment. They ascertained that both air and water temperature are slightly increased by the PV plant, although with a very limited impact on the local micro-climate.

The European Commission has alleged China offered cut-price finance to Indonesia, via Beijing’s Belt and Road drive, so Jakarta could develop domestic demand for stainless steel raw material nickel ore.

Previously announced plans by the solar developer to pay a deposit to secure gas from a connected business expired on Friday and the company has now said it will focus on a form of the energy carrier powered by renewables.

In other news, Canadian Solar revealed it shipped 14.5 GW of solar modules in 2021 and China Power said it installed 1.22 GW more solar generation capacity last year.

With polysilicon production capacity having been rapidly rolled out after last year’s shortages, China analyst Frank Haugwitz has suggested global manufacturing capability for the ethylene vinyl acetate used on PV panels could struggle to keep pace with what is expected to be another record year of demand for solar.

The Chinese electronics specialist has unveiled the first DC/DC converter in its product offering, dubbed the DC-coupled LSP 100K. The device features an efficiency of 97.9% and a European efficiency of 97.5%.

A Dutch-Chinese research team has developed a bifacial heterojunction PV cell with a 67% reduction in transparent conductive oxide (TCO) use. The TCOs used for the cell are based on indium(III) oxide (In2O3), which is considered a technology-critical element by many experts.