Eastern Europe

Russian nuclear energy giant Rosatom has acquired a 49% stake in Enertech International, a South Korean lithium-ion battery specialist, and has announced plans to build a gigafactory at an unspecified location in Russia. The start of production is scheduled for 2025.

A team of researchers from St. Petersburg say they can build a circuit interruptor that works directly into the current collector. The device operates via chemical reactions and would be thus more reliable than current battery monitoring system approaches.

Porous nanostructured microspheres made of copper, iron, and iron oxide were used by an international research team as negative anode material in lithium-ion batteries. The new technique is claimed to provide three times more capacity than batteries based on graphite anodes.

A group of international investors is planning to build a 700 MW solar plant in Arad, in western Romania.

The Amsterdam-based, Australia and central Europe-facing developer saw sales slump thanks to Covid-19 last year but has touted a growing operational project portfolio.

Data from the Instytut Energetyki Odnawialnej shows that the increasing number of grid-connection approvals may result in another record year for PV in the country in 2021.

The Northvolt manufacturing facility in Gdansk should become Europe’s largest factory for energy storage solutions. The production is scheduled to begin in 2022 with an annual capacity of 5 GWh. The company wants to expand it to 12 GWh.

The procurement exercise will be the country’s second attempt to support large-scale solar and wind. The first 88 MW auction launched last year saw the allocation of just 25.5 MW. Solar secured 13.4 MW at an average price of $0.093/kWh. Selected PV projects range in size from 50 to 500 kW.

Off-grid PV has become a much more viable solution than diesel power generators to bring electricity to Russia’s remotest regions. Furthermore, solar-plus-storage is able to deliver with no interruption 24 hours per day and seven days per week, while fuel availability means diesel power can only ensure between four and seven hours per day.

The auction has been significantly oversubscribed and has seen 36 successful projects among 257 submitted. Around 390 GWh of power was contracted and will be provided exclusively by PV projects.