Italy

Companies from a dozen EU member states will commit the public funds in a bid to come up with novel battery chemistries and production methods as well as recycling and circular economy innovation.

The Italian authorities have awarded three solar projects in yet another under-subscribed renewables tender. The lowest bid in the procurement exercise came in at €0.06819/kWh and was submitted for a 10 MW solar project. All bids were slightly below the ceiling price of €0.07/kWh. Wind secured most of the assigned capacity.

The Italian inverter maker said the two devices were designed to deal with increasing PV module currents. The inverters have a power output ranging from 10 to 33 kW and are claimed to reach an input voltage of 1100 V (DC).

European renewables, including Spanish solar, made big gains as energy demand recovered before the second wave of Covid infections. Nuclear was a notable loser, in part because clean energy volumes in the north of the continent drove down power prices sufficiently to make reactors uncompetitive.

The solar energy community will be part of a citizen energy community aimed at covering the energy needs of half of the citizens of an Italian, small northern municipality.

International researchers have developed a silicon heterojunction PV cell with textured surfaces to accommodate the perovskite top cell. They optimized the rear transparent electrode to collect as much albedo as possible and achieved five different perovskite bandgaps by altering the iodide-to-bromide ratio in the perovskites, resulting in a higher open-circuit voltage.

Italian researchers have engineered a hole extraction layer with water-splitting additives to reduce the impact of moisture in perovskite PV devices. They claim that the method ensured a power conversion efficiency of more than 9% in perovskite cells stored for a month in a water-saturated atmosphere.

Sonnedix has secured €160 million of non-recourse financing for solar PV projects in Italy.

Italy’s Tages Group is planning to build a 4.5 MW solar plant in Sicily and sell the generated electricity to the spot market.

The so-called “super bonus” for building renovation projects has been extended until the end of 2022. The Italian government has established a maximum price of €2,400 per kilowatt installed for PV systems and €1,000/kWh for storage systems.