Germany

Vanessa Nakate shocked organisers of the Berlin Energy Transition Dialogue by delivering a speech highlighting how she and a fellow youth activist had to submit their presentations for approval in advance of the event and were banned from criticising any of the politicians involved.

We’ll be hanging virtually with German political heavyweights such as foreign minister Heiko Maas and energy peer Peter Altmaier at this year’s Berlin Energy Transition Dialogue 2021 to hear what contribution solar and storage can make to combating climate change.

The Landshut University of Applied Sciences and German start-up Voltstorage will initially develop a residential battery with a capacity of 8 kWh. At a later stage, they want to fabricate a 50 kWh device for applications in the commercial segment.

German manufacturer Autarq is selling its solar tiles at a price ranging from €25 to €30 per piece. It claims a PV system built with these products can cover around 70% of household needs.

Swiss solar manufacturer Meyer Burger is now looking for people to work at its new factories in Freiberg and Bitterfeld-Wolfen, Germany. The two facilities are scheduled to start production in May.

The German photovoltaic manufacturer was once a trademark for German quality. After two bankruptcies, it is again active in Europe, primarily in the commercial and industrial rooftop segment. It sticks to the same philosophy: to offer superior solar solutions.

A cleaning robot optimized for floating PV installations was developed by German manufacturer TG hyLIFT. Also suitable for ground-mount PV, it uses only water without any type of detergent, and is powered by batteries. The robot is now being tested at a floating PV array in Spain.

Scientists at Germany’s Fraunhofer ISE developed a model to simulate different setups for screen printing in solar cell metallization. The model provides a comparable ‘screen utility index’ value that can predict the usefulness of different architectures in the printing equipment in relation to the properties of a given silver paste. The approach, says Fraunhofer, will assist the PV industry in reducing the amounts of silver needed in silicon cell manufacturing.

The German manufacturer said the result was confirmed by the US National Renewable Energy Laboratory. The achieved efficiency is claimed to be a world record for a CIGS panel with an integrated series connection of 30×30 cm.

Scientists in Germany demonstrated a slot die coating process for large-scale production of perovskite thin-film solar cells that achieved a maximum efficiency of 20.83%. Using an additive, and experimenting to find the optimal concentration, the group demonstrated improved control over the crystallization process – crucial for developing stable, repeatable processing.