Germany

Dutch gas supplier Gasunie says several market participants have reserved capacity in the first salt cavern for large-scale hydrogen storage near the Dutch city of Groningen. According to current planning, the first cavern will be operational by 2028.

US researchers have developed new integrated halide perovskite photoelectrochemical cells, while Fortescue Future Industries has revealed plans to acquire a hydrogen project from Nikola in Arizona.

Germany’s Fraunhofer Institute for Applied Solid State Physics (IAF) has developed an ultra-efficient circuit topology for voltage converters with an electrical efficiency of 99.74%. The tech could considerably raise the coefficient of performance for electrocaloric heat pumps and the scientists are now considering components based on semiconductor gallium nitride (GaN) for higher power density and efficiency.

Germany installed more than 1 GW of new PV systems in June alone. Its cumulative installed PV capacity hit 73.8 GW at the end of the first half of this year.

Germany’s Fraunhofer ISE has achieved a world record efficiency for organic cells at the lab level. It now aims to bring the PV technology to market maturity.

Utilities increasingly recognize heat pumps as a critical technology for heat decarbonization. They are deploying multi-megawatt systems in different parts of Europe to simultaneously serve multiple users and offer new avenues for the decarbonization of buildings.

The European Commission and the European Investment Bank have agreed to collaborate with Argentina, Chile and Uruguay on hydrogen, while Masdar, Mitsubishi and Inpex have said that they will use green hydrogen to produce e-methane and polypropylene.

German researchers say gas-grid retrofits for hydrogen transport, combined with power grid expansion, could decarbonize Europe’s economy, while S&P says the global ammonia trade could expand by nearly 10 times by 2050.

An international research team has fabricated a heat-driven thermoacoustic heat pump prototype that is claimed to achieve a heating capacity of 5.7 kW and a coefficient of performance of 1.4, with a heating temperature of 300 C and a heat-sink temperature of 55 C. The device uses medium/low-grade heat sources and is purportedly able to offer a complementary solution to the existing domestic heating methods.

Germany’s VoltStorage says its containerized 50 kWh vanadium redox flow battery solution can be scaled up to 500 kWh.