Spain

Spanish engineering company Sener has developed a software that analyzes different combinations of panels, trackers or tables, inverters and storage systems, as well as construction costs, depending on the market situation at any given time and the client’s preferences.

Scientists in Spain have designed a BIPV forced ventilated facade that can be used as support for heating and a domestic hot water (DHW) building system based on air source heat pumps (ASHPs). In the proposed system configuration, the heat pump is expected to cover building heating demand at all times, regardless of the performance of the solar array.

The Agua+S project under development in the Spanish region of Andalucia is aimed at combining a desalination plant, a pumping station network, and an onshore, floating photovoltaic plant in a single project design. According to its developers this is the first time that these three facilities have been combined together in a fully reproducible design that could be replicated in any river basin that has a reservoir and is close to the coast, to produce fresh water for both irrigation and human consumption.

OnSight Technology has developed a tele-operated vehicle to clean solar arrays. It is equipped with a radiometric thermal imaging camera and an optical zoom camera backed by artificial intelligence. It has a range of 12 hours and a speed of 1.6 km per hour.

A Spanish consortium is equipping one of Madrid’s largest metro and bus stations with a hybrid system that combines PV, geothermal pumps, and vanadium redox flow batteries to provide cooling and heating.

The factory is expected to begin operating with an annual capacity of 300 MW and to produce bifacial modules with a power output of 600 W.

The device integrates various current outlets that enable it to recharge, simultaneously, mobile phones, tablets or computers as well as all kinds of low-consumption electronic devices such as small appliances or electric tools, by simply unfolding the solar panels and connecting them.

Production for the HyDeal project is planned to start in 2025; the total installed capacity is expected to reach 9.5 GW of solar power and 7.4 GW of electrolyzers by 2030. Elsewhere in the world, India and Brazil are preparing rules and laws to promote green hydrogen, while research activities continue to increase hydrogen fuel cell’s efficiency and hydrogen’s use in the aviation sector.

The list of planned gigawatt-scale battery cell manufacturing plants in Europe has grown, with Anglo-Korean battery maker Eurocell announcing plans for a gigafab in Western Europe to start manufacturing at scale within 12 months.

Scientists in Spain have fabricated a silver bismuth sulfide (AgBiS₂) material with an absorption coefficient that is claimed to be 5-10 times greater than any other material currently used for PV technology. A cell built with these nanocrystals showed a power conversion efficiency of 9.17%, an open-circuit voltage of 0.495V, a short-circuit current of 26.75mA/cm², and a fill factor of 63%.