Switzerland

The Swiss Federal Office of Energy has announced that it will provide an additional CHF 30 million ($30.2 million) to reduce the waiting list for large-scale PV systems. According to local solar industry association Swissolar, however, the government must do more to reduce bureaucratic hurdles for solar energy development. The trade body also claims that the country has the potential to deploy 50 GW of PV capacity by 2050.

Meyer Burger Technology’s largest single shareholder has followed up on its recent call for the Swiss technology group to embark on a new strategic path by launching a new website.

NEC Energy Solutions has finished installing an 18 MW, 7.5 MWh grid storage system (GSS) in Switzerland for Elektrizitätswerke des Kantons Zürich.

Meyer Burger has struck a strategic partnership with Oxford PV to expedite the mass production of perovskite on silicon heterojunction (HJT) tandem cells.

With the legal squabble between Hanwha Q Cells and three rival solar manufacturers now encompassing three countries, equipment supplier Meyer Burger saw fit to refer to the dispute in its latest announcement of an Asian contract win.

The Swiss solar equipment maker has endorsed a claim by Chinese solar manufacturer Longi that the technology it uses differs from that at the center of Hanwha Q Cells’ patent infringement complaints.

The renowned PV-Lab at Switzerland’s École Polytechnique Fédérale De Lausanne today announced that it has taken on the role of coordinator for the EU funded research project ‘Be-Smart’, which aims at developing a European industry for building integrated PV components.

The module was developed by Insolight, a spin-off of Switzerland’s École polytechnique fédérale de Lausanne. The panel is based on tiny solar cells usually used for spaceflight applications and the limited amount used in the module makes it close to mass production, its creators claim.

Some 377 households and a retirement home are participating in a pilot project. In the first two weeks of this month, solar power generators sold 82% of their electricity within the neighborhood. The goal of the one-year test run is to develop a viable concept for the local marketing of solar power.

The Energy Storage Europe conference and trade show is nearing and pv magazine is featuring the top ten developments in the field as our Energy Storage Highlights, selected by an independent jury of experts. We kick off with Proton Motor’s contribution to a Swiss project that enables apartment tenants to live without a gas or electricity grid connection.