Germany

With two cycles per day, the Forton can be loaded without voiding its 15-year performance guarantee. That opens the possibility of trading on the electricity market, enabling companies to recoup their investment more quickly.

German energy storage sales are shrinking, especially home systems, but commercial and industrial (C&I) and utility-scale numbers are rising and the Federal Association of Energy Storage Systems (BVES) wants faster permitting and better regulation.

Chile’s economic development agency Corfo has selected three companies – two Chinese and one Spanish – to build electrolyzer production facilities in the country. The projects, set to begin operations by mid-2026, will assemble alkaline and proton exchange membrane (PEM) electrolyzers ranging from 50 kW to 5 MW.

German researchers have found that the majority of subsidies required to reach the country’s renewable energy targets have already been paid, with an estimated 80% to 90% of subsidies for units in operation covered. The costs of newer renewable energy sources have decreased and are often competitive with remunerations from the wholesale market.

HyIron says it has produced the first green hydrogen molecules at its Namibian facility, while Copenhagen Infrastructure Partners (CIP) has secured AUD 814 million ($512 million) for its Murchison Green Hydrogen project in Western Australia.

The Fraunhofer Institute for Machine Tools and Forming Technology IWU will showcase a new hydrogen microgrid platform at the end of March. The researchers say it could help to serve hospitals, remote rural areas and war-torn regions.

A global research team has developed a tandem solar cell with 30% transparency by combining perovskite and organic layers, achieving a record 12.3% efficiency for transparent solar cells.

The inverters use a silicon carbide metal-oxide-semiconductor field-effect transistor for high power conversion capability.

New research from Germany has investigated for the first time the idea of building a photovoltaic Dyson sphere, a theoretical megastructure that could provide vast amounts of energy for interstellar space travel and large-scale technological endeavors. Despite its highly theoretical and science-fiction inspiration, the study explains what consequences a similar construct would have on life on Earth.

The novel heat pump system relies on a thermal sensor based on an adsorbent-coated sensor layout developed by Vaillant in cooperation with the Fraunhofer Institute for Solar Energy Systems (Fraunhofer ISE). This technology is reportedly effective in preventing propane from forming an ignitable mixture with air outside the device.