United Kingdom

Cash grants and state-backed loans to support solar and battery storage installations in millions of UK homes as part of government Warm Homes Plan. UK government says investment has the potential to triple the number of homes with rooftop solar by 2030.

Researchers have used multivalent amidinium ligands to boost perovskite solar cell efficiency to 25.4%, achieving over 95% stability after 1,100 hours at 85  C. The proposed approach enables controlled low-dimensional passivation layers, offering a practical route for durable, large-area perovskite devices.

RWE has started commissioning a 100 MW electrolyzer in Germany to supply renewable hydrogen under long-term contracts, while Hydrogen Utopia International and Hydrogen Systems are advancing plans to build waste-to-hydrogen plants in Saudi Arabia.

A Husqvarna researcher developed a fast, interpretable PV hotspot-detection method using IR thermography and Lab* color-space features instead of heavy neural networks, achieving up to 95.2% accuracy with shallow classifiers. The lightweight system works in real time on drones or edge devices and could save 17,620 kWh and 8.9 tons of CO₂ annually by improving fault detection in solar panels.

A startup led by Cambridge University scientists and the former chair of Oxford PV is attempting to commercialize flow battery electrolytes with greater energy density than vanadium-based batteries. Kodiaq Technologies claims its electrolytes can be deployed as a drop-in solution for redox flow batteries.

A University of Exeter team has tested single-axis tracking systems for floating solar across 12 UK sites, finding azimuthal tracking delivers the largest energy gains and lowest levelized cost of energy (LCOE).

Total number of UK PV plants backed by contracts for difference (CfD) could more than double in 2026, if developers hit deadlines. Latest investment report from scheme contract company reveals solar holds the greatest number of contracts of any generating technology.

Scientists have developed a floating PV digital twin system, trained on data from 155 physical experiments, using a two-tier artificial neural network (ANN) with a high-fidelity model and a reduced-order model. Predictive performance reached R2 values of 0.9996 for PV surface temperature and 0.9189 for power output.

Research commissioned by the UK government finds rooftop solar panels can significantly influence fire behavior, particularly when the height gap between modules and the roof surface falls below critical limits.

Scientists have simulated a residential building based on a real double-story house in the United Kingdom, combining rooftop agrivoltaics with onsite hydrogen production. Electricity generated by the solar system is used to produce hydrogen, which is then supplied to a hydrogen vehicle and insulated gasochromic smart windows.