Europe

SMA’s Home Solutions segment was particularly badly hit as the PV inverter manufacturer struggled to meet the demand due to the shortage of materials. The sales and results in the first half of 2022 were therefore significantly worse than in 2021. The company now wants to take “a series of measures to improve its long-term ability to deliver.”

EDP Renewables says the acquisition of a 70% stake in Kronos Solar Projects will open up the German and Dutch renewables markets to the Portuguese energy company.

Shell will purchase four planned PV projects totaling 100 MW in various locations across northern England. It says it will seek offtakers for the projects through its power trading team and sees strong demand in the corporate power purchase agreement sector.

The government of Bosnia and Herzegovina’s Serb Republic has adopted a net metering scheme to facilitate the deployment of 50,000 PV rooftop PV systems on residential and commercial buildings.

Researchers at Surrey’s Advanced Technology Institute have demonstrated a new, highly integrated, flexible photo-rechargeable system based on zinc-ion batteries and perovskite solar cells. It only needs a few seconds of sunlight to keep smart wearables charged.

Scientists in the Netherlands have developed a model to forecast the energy yield of a PV system. It is able to take into account factors such as partial shading and multiple module orientations. Tested against a reference cell and pyranometer, the model showed less than 5% error, and the scientists claim their approach is up to three orders of magnitude faster than more common approaches using complex ray tracing.

Iberdrola will develop a facility to supply green hydrogen to vehicles and machinery at the United Kingdom’s largest port, Felixstowe. The project is set start operations in 2026, with the capacity to produce 14,000 tons of green hydrogen in its first year, and the possibility to double this further down the line.

An international team of scientists developed a nanoparticle structure which, when added to a solar cell, was shown to scatter light and potentially reflect it many times within the cell, contributing to a noticeable jump in current.

PV system operators in Germany recorded high revenues in July, as solar generation continued to break record after record.