Europe

SolarPower Europe says in a new report that households in Germany, Spain, and Italy can more than triple their savings by pairing PV with heat pumps. It said this combination helped families to save between 62% and 84% on their annual energy bills in 2022.

The European Union is working on a draft proposal, which pv magazine has seen, that would require 85% of the components used in European wind farms – along with 60% of heat pumps, 85% of batteries, and 85% of electrolyzers – to be manufactured on the continent.

Technique Solaire plans to analyze animal behavior in outdoor poultry farms covered with solar panels linked by nets. The setup could be potentially beneficial for the birds and the quality of their meat.

Fraunhofer ISE has presented the results of retrofit heat pump installations in multi-family homes in Germany. One demonstrator featured rooftop solar PV and a multi-source heat pump developed in partnership with Viessmann. It uses air and geothermal as heat sources.

Scientists from Germany’s Fraunhofer ISE and US panel maker Solaria have applied thermal laser separation and post-metallization passivated edge technology to tunnel oxide passivated contact (TOPCon) cell production. They have developed shingle PV devices that are more efficient than cells built with conventional laser scribing and mechanical cleaving methods.

France’s Systovi is ramping up the annual capacity of its module factory in Carquefou, France. pv magazine France spoke to the company’s general director, Paul Toulouse, about European manufacturing and competition from Asia.

A Japanese state innovation fund has agreed to finance a coal-to-hydrogen project in Australia, while Honda says it has taken another step toward the commercialization of zero-emission backup power generation.

United Kingdom-based Above’s founder and CEO Will Hitchcock sits down with pv magazine to discuss the solar industry’s growing demand for drone-based aerial inspection and data analysis, the game changing utility of digital twins, and what the future holds for autonomous drone programs. 

Researchers have looked at whether Germany can substitute more gas with renewables-powered heat pumps or renewable electricity to reduce load hours at gas-fired power plants. They argue that heat pumps are the fastest way to cut German gas consumption.

Scientists in the Netherlands have proposed the extension of the IEC 61853 standard to bifacial solar modules, with some key corrections. In particular, they recommend changing the third and fourth parts of the standard.