Middle East

China’s Sungrow has signed three landmark energy storage contracts with Saudi Arabia’s Algihaz Holding, amounting to the world’s largest grid-side storage order. Each project will have a capacity of 2.6 GWh, totaling 7.8 GWh.

A JinkoSolar-led consortium has announced plans to construct a 10 GW solar cell and module factory in Saudi Arabia with PIF and Vision Industries Company.

Though it already hosts several of the world’s largest PV installations, the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region’s solar industry is still young, with limited local infrastructure and expertise. Project developers are learning quickly that building PV in harsh desert environments requires a careful eye on quality. New testing laboratories are looking to meet demand.

EDF has won an Israeli solar tender with a bid of $0.019/kWh, securing a 100 MW project to sell energy at a record price of ILS 0.07 ($0.02)/kWh.

AgRE.tech, which is developing a robotic operating system for existing photovoltaic infrastructure, has raised $2 million from EDF and Zemach Regional Industries. The company says it will soon set up commercial fields.

The Saudi Arabian developer has reached financial close for the Tashkent Riverside project in Uzbekistan, which includes a 200 MW solar plant and a 500 MWh battery energy storage system (BESS).

The Saudi research institute said its new four-terminal tandem device has achieved the highest efficiency ever reported for perovskite-based 4-T and triple-junction tandem solar cells to date. The key feature of the cell is the hole transport layer of the top perovskite cell, which was engineered with self-assembled monolayers.

Scientists in the Emirates have conceived a new space vector pulse width modulation method that reportedly reduces switching losses and increase efficiency in three-phase photovoltaic inverters. The proposed technique was found to have a higher efficiency, while providng lower common-mode voltage, leakage current and total harmonic distortion compared to traditional pulse width modulation approaches.

Agri-Light has launched its first pilot agrivoltaic project, using a two-axis solar installation on a rail system to move solar panels horizontally above a vineyard in the Negev Desert. The results are due this summer, and the company plans to build commercial projects in Israel and Spain next year.

A group of scientists from the UAE-based energy utility has developed a new method to conduct I-V curve measurements without transporting the solar modules to laboratories for detailed analysis. The proposed Suns-Vmp approach reportedly offers a “very low” average root mean square error between the simulated and the real I-V curves.