France

Ballard Power Systems says it has started restructuring its global operations to cut costs due to slower hydrogen infrastructure development and delayed fuel cell adoption.

The French energy regulator says in a new report that France allocated about 5.55 GW of PV capacity through its auction mechanism for large-scale solar between 2011 and 2013. Despite falling solar module prices, the auction mechanism did not lead to cheaper PV electricity or lower project costs.

Researchers led by scientists from CNRS in France are exploring an exotic form of silicon called silicon clathrate as a material for energy applications, including photovoltaics. Mastering the synthesis and using appropriate characterizations are key elements towards potential applications. Significant progress is being made for the fabrication of functional devices.

KiloWattSol, an independent solar consultancy, says there were 308 hours of negative electricity prices from the start of 2024 to Aug. 23 – more than double the 147 negative hours recorded in 2023.

La Croisière Verte is the name of a 13,500 km expedition from the north to south of Africa in a fleet of four Citroën AMI vehicles, each carrying 5,600 W of lightweight PV panels in foldable packs.

The German government says that the H2Mare OffgridWind project in Denmark has connected two electrolyzers to a wind turbine for hydrogen production, while Ontras Gastransport and H2 Energy Europe have agreed to define the technical and commercial framework for hydrogen transportation in its Green Octopus Mitteldeutschland pipeline project.

French developer Green Lighthouse Développement says the French authorities have approved its 450 MW agrivoltaic project on 200 hectares of agricultural land in southwestern France.

Sweden-based Innoventum has launched a solar carport line equipped with bifacial modules in a larch wood structure. The solution may include electric vehicle charging, energy storage, LED lighting, and inverter systems.

Renewables developer Q Energy has closed €50.4 million ($55.7 million) in financing for a 74.3 MW floating solar plant in northeastern France. Construction is already underway, with commissioning planned for the first quarter of next year.

Conceived by French scientists, the novel system uses ensemble learning and does not require anything more than a commercially available optimizer. Before it makes a decision, the method combines K nearest neighbors, support vector machine, and decision tree learning. Accuracy is reportedly up to 89%.