China

Heavily-indebted developer Beijing Enterprises Clean Energy has said it plans to use part of its anticipated $600 million windfall constructing 655MW of agrivoltaic and acquaculture-linked PV generation capacity.

A US-Chinese research group has developed a full chlorine membrane-free redox flow battery that is claimed to achieve a round-trip energy efficiency of 91% at 10 mA/cm2 and an energy density of 125.7 Wh/L. The device is based on an aqueous electrolyte made of sodium chloride (NaCl) which uses chlorine (Cl2/Cl−) redox couple as the active material for the positive electrode.

Elsewhere, Wafer manufacturer Shangji Automation has secured a long-term wafer supply agreement from cell maker Aiko Solar and wafer maker Zhonghuan Semiconductor reported record revenue for 2021. Furthermore, GCL-Poly appears to have backtracked on its plan to rename the business GCL Technology

Longi Solar has released the data of an inhomogeneous snow-load test. Its results show that its 72-cell solar modules held 1,800 pascals more force than a competing large format product using 210 mm cells.

Manufacturers Longi and Zhonghuan Semiconductor have both raised the price of their 182mm wafers while holding the cost of their other products as rival Shuangliang Eco-energy signed deals for more wafer production equipment.

The London-based analyst has published a series of clean tech predictions for the year which also highlighted the rising proportion of sub-5MW solar projects in the global market, and cheaper clean energy financing costs even as panel prices continue to rise.

Glass maker Flat Glass wants to add 7,200 MT of new glass capacity spread across six new production lines and panel manufacturer Eging PV started construction of a new PV panel factory with an annual capacity of 5 GW.

Built by a Dutch-Chinese research team, the cell is relying on a new type of hybrid-shaped Cu finger consisting of a rectangular bottom part and a round top part, which was integrated into the cell through a 2-step electrochemical deposition process. The Cu-plated device outperformed both optically and electrically a reference cell fabricated via screen printing.

The panel is part of the company’s new TOPCon module series, which also includes a 430W product with an efficiency of 21.99%.

Also, heterojunction module manufacturer Huasun has begun assembling production lines at its new 2GW factory and Trina Solar has agreed to buy 290 million wafers from Beijing Jingyuntong Technology.