United Kingdom

The managing director of London-based energy infrastructure company Statera has told pv magazine a clean energy grid in the U.K. will require as much flexible gas plant capacity as battery storage.

Another large scale transaction by the electricity and gas supplier has enhanced its standing in the U.K. energy market, with the business now counting more than one million customers.

Traditional solar cookers concentrate sunlight on mirrored surfaces and convert it into heat. But this summer, Sunspot unveiled Sunspot Solar Electric Cooking, a new cooker based on PV technology. The system relies on two PV modules, a lead-carbon battery, an inverter, and an induction cooktop.

URE Energy repeatedly missed deadlines to settle a £209,000 bill after it failed to source enough of the electricity it supplied two years ago from renewable generation.

Ireland appears ready to embrace PV after years of failed announcements. Globaldata predicts the EU member state will deploy around 1.3 GW of solar by 2030, with renewables potentially meeting 65% of electricity demand. Furthermore, Irish Water has announced it wants to deploy solar at its water treatment plants.

The British-German perovskite startup has ordered a turnkey 100 MW silicon heterojunction solar cell line from the Swiss PV equipment supplier. The terms of the deal were not disclosed.

Energy analysts from the United Kingdom have found that many of the world’s largest car manufacturers that are launching EVs, or looking to launch EVs, are engaged in an “unprecedented” level of collaboration in order to share the costs and risks inherent in EV development. Cornwall Insight found that the collaboration could see a major boom in supply from the early 2020s.

Railway operators can now feasibly connect solar plants to traction substations, claims a consortium that is now working on a similar demonstration project in the U.K. Almost all of the 30 kW installation’s output will be used to move trains, but in the future storage could come into the picture for larger “railway-connected” solar power projects, says 10:10, the U.K.-based climate change charity that developed the pilot.

Scientists at the U.K.’s Faraday Institution have been able to observe degradation mechanisms at the lithium metal anode in a solid state battery, and made several discoveries which could improve the performance and design of future solid-state lithium-ion batteries.

A group buying program which has prompted more than 600 rooftop arrays across 14 boroughs in the capital is set to be extended next month with officials hoping another 700-1,000 households will embrace the scheme by June.