New York

Plus there is news this week of a green hydrogen tie-up in India, plans for another German production facility, and of new hydrogen transport networks for Switzerland and the U.S.

Made up of distributed residential energy storage, these “plants” stabilize the grid and often end the need for new fossil generation. Tesla customers in California are the latest to join the movement.

Italian energy company Eni is partnering with local companies in Algeria and Egypt to explore the possibility of producing green and blue hydrogen in the North African countries. The United Arab Emirates is also collaborating with Japanese partners to develop the country’s hydrogen sector, while in New York, hydrogen has arrived in Long Island.

A Rochester-based firm aims to print perovskite and other PV layers on a flexible glass substrate using a roll-to-roll machine Kodak has used to produce photographic film.

With electric vehicles starting to gain traction, the International Energy Agency’s updated, ten-year e-mobility forecast has suggested geopolitical and economic concerns will trump environmental niceties when it comes to encouraging recycling. But what price ever-cheaper batteries?

Analysts appear divided on the effects the public health crisis will have on the EV market even as sales of petrol-engined SUVs soar in China. And Portugal is plowing on with its Covid-delayed national solar tender, an exercise which may help establish whether clean energy thinktank Ieefa is right to predict PV prices will continue to fall.

Tesla’s Nevada operation is still open for business, though. The EV and battery maker has assured the market its cash position is strong enough to weather an “extended period of uncertainty”.

Researchers at MIT say the immense hydropower resources of the Canadian province could be used as storage to even out the supply of intermittent renewables generation in New England and New York state.

pv magazine has spoken to José Antonio Unanue, director of the battery energy storage system business at Ingeteam, the equipment integrator and manufacturer of the first grid-connected battery storage system in Spain, which electric utility Iberdrola launched in Caravaca de la Cruz, Murcia, at the end of November.

The U.S. asset management fund’s plan to cut future investment in coal is reportedly part of a climate-focused initiative to establish sustainability at the center of its business approach. The announcement comes weeks after the investor closed $1 billion of a record $2.5 billion fund focused on PV, wind and energy storage projects.