Italy

In another interview from the series held at Intersolar 2023, pv magazine spoke with Paolo Rocco Viscontini, president of the PV association Italia Solare. He said the Italian solar market is now inevitably poised to see more growth across all segments this year and during the current decade. He also spoke about market drivers, current demand, and the PPA business, as well as large-scale and small-sized storage.

Vargas, Northvolt’s parent company, has launched Aira, a new business venture that will sell heat pumps on a monthly fee basis. The venture is in the pilot phase in Italy and will expand to Germany and the United Kingdom later this year. It plans to start production in 2024 at a factory in Wroclaw, Poland.

Italy’s 3Sun, a unit of Enel Green Power, has developed new monofacial PV modules based on n-type heterojunction (HJT) G12 solar cells. The M40 series for rooftop applications has power ratings ranging from 440 W to 480 W and an efficiency of up to 25%.

The world installed 239 GW of new solar capacity in 2022, according to SolarPower Europe. The rooftop PV segment accounted for 49.5% of additions – the highest share in the past three years. The rooftop sectors in Brazil, Italy, and Spain grew by 193%, 127%, and 105%, respectively.

Italy deployed 741 MW/1,098 MWh of new distributed storage capacity in the first quarter of 2023.

The US government has identified the hydrogen sector as a key energy opportunity, while Hystar has signed its first PEM electrolyzer deal and Plug Power has agreed to supply fuel cells for long-term storage during emergencies in California.

CEA-INES researchers and Enel have developed a new solar cell with an active area of 9 cm² and an open-circuit voltage above 1,900 mV. Their results improve on the 26.5% efficiency they achieved for the same kind of cell in March.

Italian scientists have used a titanium oxide sponge to successfully prevent lead leakage in a semitransparent solar cell. The device has demonstrated comparable efficiency to semi-transparent perovskite devices and has an average visible transmittance (AVT) of 31.4%.

The International Energy Agency (IEA) said in a new report that solar will remain the main source of global renewable capacity expansion in 2023, accounting for 286 GW. In 2024, the figure is set to grow to almost 310 GW, driven by lower module prices, greater uptake of distributed PV systems, and a policy push for large-scale deployment.

Mitsubishi Electric has launched a demonstration experiment to assess the efficiency of heat pumps in demand-response control on the Aran Islands in Ireland and San Pietro Island in Italy. As part of the European Union’s REACT project, solar, wind, and storage solutions will also be implemented to enhance the energy self-sufficiency of isolated islands.