Sweden

The northern European country’s cumulative installed solar capacity reached 411 MW at the end of 2018. Around 10,000 new PV systems were deployed in total last year.

Automaker Volkswagen and Swedish lithium-ion battery producer Northvolt have announced plans to jointly form and lead a new organization, the European Battery Union (EBU), to conduct research on batteries used in transport and stationary energy storage applications.

The Solarville project, by Ikea’s Danish research and design laboratory, has seen the participation of blockchain companies such as Bloc, Blocktech, WeMoveIdeas India and Temporal. It was conceived to help create cooperative community micro-grids to enable homeowners to become clean energy traders.

SB Energy Corp, a subsidiary of Japanese multinational Softbank, has announced a strategic partnership with Swedish company Exeger, which produces dye sensitized solar cells designed for integration into consumer electronic devices. Under the terms of the agreement, Softbank Group will invest $10 million in Exeger, with SB Energy Corp set to assist global rollout of the technology.

CIGS thin-film production equipment company Midsummer posted record orders in 2018. With a U.S. partner, the company noted uptake was partly due to Californian requirements to integrate PV into all new (low-rise) buildings from next year.

A research team from Sweden has developed a new iron-based molecule, which it says has the potential for further cost reductions in solar cells, and can also function as a photocatalyst to produce fuel.

Upon completion, the long-term storage benefits of compressed hydrogen, coupled with an abundance of solar radiation in the summer months, will allow for a fully energy-sufficient 172 home apartment block in Sweden.

Sweden based CIGS equipment supplier Midsummer has received an order worth more than $7 million for its production equipment. The order was placed by U.S. based manufacturer Sunflare, for a new factory under construction in China.

A new report suggests that better guarantee mechanisms and securities could unlock more investments from Scandinavia for renewable energy projects in developing countries. Overall, however, it finds that Norway, Sweden and Denmark have comprehensive mechanisms in place for bringing together industry and public support schemes.

Although provisional statistics indicated the country had 230 MW of PV capacity at the end of last year, a new report reveals solar growth in 2017 was larger than expected – at 117.6 MW – and that cumulative installed capacity surpassed 300 MW.