Europe

France’s fourth PV tender for non-interconnected areas allocated 40 MW across Corsica, Réunion, and French Guiana. The weighted average tariff fell to €92.04 ($107.59)/MWh, while overall subscription remained well below the 99 MW available.

Croatia’s solar capacity is on course to exceed its wind energy capacity for the first time in early 2026. With utility-scale projects facing regulatory deadlock and the end of net-metering for the residential market, growth is being led by commercial and industrial customers.

An international research group has conducted a literature review of capital expenditure-driven levelized cost of electricity optimization strategies for utility-scale PV systems. Tracking optimization, system voltage escalation, and advanced system design are identified as the most promising cost reduction areas. “The next wave of PV research must be LCOE-native, system-level, and deployment-validated,” a member of the research group said.

Germany added an estimated 6.57 GWh of stationary battery storage capacity in 2025, an increase of about 8% year on year, lifting total installed capacity to roughly 24 GWh. Growth was driven by industrial and large-scale systems, even as home storage installations declined alongside weaker rooftop solar demand.

The use of a novel roll-to-roll process and optimization technology resulted in polymer foils for use in colored PV modules in a potentially wide range of colors with low iridescence and low levels of efficiency loss.

This article of the Women in Solar+ Europe series brings together experts and leaders featured throughout 2025 to reflect on why leadership must be redefined for today’s realities. Their insights highlight inclusion not as an add-on, but as the very heart of effective, future-ready leadership.

RWE has started commissioning a 100 MW electrolyzer in Germany to supply renewable hydrogen under long-term contracts, while Hydrogen Utopia International and Hydrogen Systems are advancing plans to build waste-to-hydrogen plants in Saudi Arabia.

By 2050, sodium-ion batteries with fast learning rates could deliver storage at 11–14 €/MWh – cheaper than lithium-ion at 16–22 €/MWh – while also offering higher energy-to-power ratios and high cycle durability, a new research finds.

A Husqvarna researcher developed a fast, interpretable PV hotspot-detection method using IR thermography and Lab* color-space features instead of heavy neural networks, achieving up to 95.2% accuracy with shallow classifiers. The lightweight system works in real time on drones or edge devices and could save 17,620 kWh and 8.9 tons of CO₂ annually by improving fault detection in solar panels.