Germany

Innovative solar wafer company Nexwafe has closed its latest financing round with €32 million. The round was lead by the Indian group Reliance, which contributed €25 million to the round. The Freiburg-based wafer manufacturer intends to use the funds to drive forward the production and commercialization of its kerfless PV wafers.

This week sees hydrogen pricing hit new highs, driven by simultaneous jumps in the price of natural gas and electricity. Elsewhere, project plans include green hydrogen production at a UK brewery and Ineos building a 100 MW electrolyzer in Germany, machinery manufacturers Rolls Royce and JCB making plans for hydrogen engines, and new investment agreements signed in Belgium, Sweden and Kazakhstan.

Belgian materials company Umicore has signed a contract with Australia headquartered Vulcan Energy Resources to purchase up to 42,000 tons of lithium hydroxide over a five year period beginning in 2025. The material will be used in Umicore’s production of cathode materials for lithium-ion cell manufacturers.

A report from Australia’s Future Battery Industries Cooperative Research Centre which analysed the development of battery hubs in the U.S., Germany and Japan, has found that co-location and cooperation between industry and government were key to their success. For Australia to play the same game, it will have to leverage its wealth of resources, and clean up its act along the way.

The leading industrial electrolyzer maker is planning to expand its alkaline electrolysis business with the construction of a large-scale production site in Germany that will have an annual manufacturing capacity of 500 MW by 2023, with a further extension to gigawatt-scale already in the planning.

Reliance New Energy Solar, a subsidiary of Reliance Industries led by billionaire Mukesh Ambani, which is planning a huge manufacturing venture in Gujarat, India, has led a series C financing round in German wafer manufacturer NexWafe with an investment of EUR 25 million ($29 million). This marks the third major investment in renewables announced by the Indian multinational this week.

Meyer Burger plans to start selling a new building-integrated PV product from 2022. It says the solar tiles have a high energy yield, with simplified installation and the ability to also provide heating. German engineering company paXos designed the tiles.

Solar energy is smarter and more affordable than ever before. And with its LUNA2000 distributed battery storage product, Huawei is further unlocking the value of PV, enabling the use of solar energy long after sunset. By taking a closer look into some key residential storage markets, how this value stacks up truly becomes clear.

German equipment supplier M10 and research institute Fraunhofer ISE will unveil a new prototype stringer for shingled module layouts at the Intersolar Europe trade show later this week. Employing an offset layout for the shingles, the approach promises a relative efficiency gain of up to 6%, compared to a conventional half-cell module.

The modular battery can be cascaded up to 30.7 kWh of storage capacity. The Energy Butler is a storage kit made up of up to eight modules.