United Kingdom

U.K.-based Tribus and PS Renewables are seeking environmental approval to build the country’s largest PV facility across two sites in Suffolk and Cambridgeshire. The Sunnica Energy Farm will also include large-scale storage capacity at both facilities.

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

Just three months after revealing that it had achieved a 28% conversion efficiency with its perovskite-silicon tandem solar cells, Oxford PV has closed the initial portion of a Series D funding round aimed at bringing its core technologies to market.

The heavily-indebted solar developer has sold off six solar projects to a U.K.-Irish renewables investment fund for £34 million, ensuring it will be able to settle the most immediate of its reported $3.1 billion commitments.

Researchers from the U.S. Department of Energy’s Argonne National Laboratory, working with Cambridge University, programmed a ‘supercomputer’ to narrow down a list of almost 10,000 materials with the potential to be used in dye-sensitized solar cells to just five that fit their parameters for high performance, low cost and low environmental impact.

The virtual facility is monitoring approximately 1 GW of combined wind, solar, storage and flexible gas engines in the U.K. and its capacity may double in the summer. The energy managed by the plant is being sold on the British energy market.

Two sites with capacities of 34.7 MW and 25.7 MW will supply unsubsidized power to Warrington Borough Council. The smaller project will provide the local authority’s energy needs and reduce its electricity bill while the larger one will sell renewable energy on the open market, further bolstering council income.

A bevy of lenders from Australia, Germany and the Netherlands have provided up to £272 million for 17 solar and onshore wind projects that benefit from the U.K.’s expired incentives program.

With its investment, the energy company has broadened its portfolio of ways to help customers save on energy bills. There are multiple energy companies pursuing similar goals at the moment as distributed generation and storage solutions require utilities to find new business models; not the least to avoid grid expansion costs.

The Energy Storage Europe conference 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. Having kicked off with a hydrogen fuel cell based approach to self-sufficient living in Switzerland, and DNV GL’s bid to map the vast battery storage landscape, we continue with a small island’s approach to grid stability.