Amazon warehouse fire linked to solar installation
A recent fire at an Amazon warehouse, with an estimated $500,000 in damages, has been linked to an issue with a rooftop solar system, according to Susquehanna Hose Co.
Solar 101: Multiple threats to jolt your solar project
Homeowner associations and town councils can derail your solar project, but so can dust from nearby factories and bivalve mollusks falling from the sky.
California explores real-time retail pricing to enable more renewables
California will need widespread demand flexibility to reach its renewables goal. Real-time electricity pricing is one tool that is being considered.
First Solar to add 3.3 GW of capacity in a new $680 million US factory
The 1.8 million-square-foot facility is projected to create 500 jobs and produce an enhanced thin-film PV module for the utility-scale solar market in the U.S.
Solar microgrid to offer protection from fire threats
Remote grids provide enhanced reliability, lower risk profiles, and lower total costs than existing distribution lines.
Energy storage deployments slowed in the US in Q1, but the sector is on track for 3x growth in 2021, report says
Favorable federal tax policies and state regulatory reform could help the storage sector notch even higher rates of growth.
Perovskite solar cell with 19.1% efficiency via CO2 doping
Thanks to a carbon dioxide doping technique, the solar cell interlayers exhibited conductivity around five times higher than that of a perovskite cell based on interlayers doped with oxygen. The device also showed an open-circuit voltage of 1.14 V, a short-circuit current density of 21.2 mA cm2 and a fill factor of 0.79.
Computational model for agrivoltaics
A U.S. scientist has developed a computational framework that assesses how well a hypothetical agrivoltaic project would perform in achieving desired outcomes such as the volume of PV electricity produced, and energy-to-agriculture. The method considers the high-frequency decomposition of solar irradiance into multiple rays and analyzes how these rays are propagated forward in time, to assess multiple reflections and absorption for various system configurations. It also takes into account panel inclination, panel refractive indices, sizes, shapes, heights, and albedo.
A repair tape for cracked backsheets
Backsheet failures have plagued the industry, causing hefty financial burdens to many asset owners. DuPont has launched a product it says allows for easy repair of modules.
Cleaning solar modules with sand and wind, on Mars
NASA scientists have partially cleaned up the solar modules of the Insight lander operating on Mars, by using grain sands collected nearby and trickling them on the panels during the windiest time of the day. This handmade technique has made it possible, according to them, to increase the PV array’s yield of about 30 watt-hours of energy per ‘sol,’ or Martian day.
