United States

Solar PV module shipments reached a record high in the U.S. market in 2020, up 33% year on year.

Juno Solar is one of five projects that SB Energy is building this year, with an additional 1.3 GW scheduled to go online over the next seven months.

Scientists in the United States used machine learning to analyze maintenance reports, performance data and weather records from more than 800 solar farms located across the country. The analysis allowed them to determine which weather conditions have the biggest impact on PV generation, and to suggest the most effective ways to boost the resilience of PV installations to extreme weather events.

NREL researchers developed a system that uses heated silica particles for thermal energy storage. The baseline technology is designed for a storage capacity of up to 26,000 MWh and is claimed to have a cost of of between $2 and $4 per kWh.

Module manufacturer Silfab has opened a new plant north of Seattle and is now shipping its 370 W Prime series modules.

Scientists in the U.S. discovered a promising new battery chemistry based on chlorine and table salt. Batteries based on this chemistry can achieve at least six times the energy density of today’s lithium-ion batteries, according to the group that created it. The prototype battery could already be suitable for small devices such as hearing aids, and with further work could be scaled up to larger applications.

U.S. solar projects totaling more than 1.1 GW in potential capacity have public hearings coming up this fall, as the state of Ohio experiences a rush of developer proposals.

U.S. researchers have proposed a new approach to fabricate solar thermophotovoltaics (STPV) with higher power densities. The novel technique consists of reducing the distance between the emitter and the solar cell to a nanoscale.

The solar cell was manufactured with crystals that were grown directly onto indium tin oxide (ITO) substrates covered with hole transport layer (HTL). These substrates have a controlled thickness of tens of micrometers and area of tens of mm2. The device showed an efficiency of 17.8%, a short-circuit current of 21.0 mA cm−2, an open-circuit voltage to 1.08 V, and a fill factor to 78.6%.

The governments of Mexico, Malaysia, and Turkey – along with the Solar Energy Industries Association, NextEra Energy Resources, REC Americas, and other companies – are chiming in to have a say in a recently reignited debate in the U.S. solar market.