Finland

A Finnish-Norwegian research group has assessed the global potential of vertical east-west bifacial PV (VBPV) projects and found that these installations may provide a low LCOE at Nordic latitudes, in Central Europe and subtropical desert areas. The researchers also found that residential and commercial VBPV systems are a grid-friendly solution for low-voltage networks when compared to monofacial arrays.

Elsewhere, the Fraunhofer ISE research institute has unveiled a new tool for high-resolution power-to-X kinetic analysis, and German entities have signed partnership agreements with the Abu Dhabi National Oil Company.

Researchers from Finland and Sweden have reviewed different ways to store compressed gaseous hydrogen, including storage vessels, geological storage, and other underground options.

The German clean power company and Huhtamaki have signed a 10-year deal that will ensure the construction of two solar farms in southern Spain with an aggregate generation capacity of around 135 MWp.

Developed by researchers in Finland, the solar cell is intended to be used as part of lattice-matched multi-junction solar cells. It achieved a short-circuit current density of 15.2 mA/cm² and external quantum efficiency of 0.79.

The solar park will occupy 500ha of abandoned peatland in southern Finland. The project’s levelized cost of energy is estimated at less than €0.04/kWh.

A call for grant proposals has been promised this month, with the bloc’s executive yesterday firing the gun on a separate exercise related to cross-border EU energy infrastructure projects.

Plus, as the European Commission prepares to present its ‘Fit for 55’ climate change package tomorrow, European companies are continuing to develop hydrogen plans, including Shell in Norway and Siemens in Germany.

Although self-consumption of solar power is the optimal economic approach, the expense of household batteries at present outweighs the increased ability they offer to use electricity generated on the roof. Whether aggregated ‘virtual batteries’ offer better returns is an open question, due to lack of electricity company transparency.

According to a new study from LUT University, domestic water heating costs may be reduced by combining rooftop PV with geothermal heat pumps. Scientists developed a control method to minimize these costs by taking advantage of cheap spot market electricity and maximized PV power generation, as well as considering heat demand, PV generation forecasts, and heat pump efficiency.