Western Europe

Phaesun and Solar Cooling Engineering have developed a PV-powered cold room for small-scale farmers in Africa. The solution, which has been installed at a farm in Kenya, includes a 2.8 kW solar array and vapor compression heat pumps.

Green Akku’s “selfPV” solution is available in versions featuring one or two solar modules, with prices ranging from €2,057 ($2.215) to €2,434. It says homeowners can self-consume all of the generated solar power, without having to feed it into the grid.

Lhyfe has revealed plans to jointly develop offshore renewable green hydrogen with Centrica in the United Kingdom. Separately, the Paris-listed hydrogen producer said it has also acquired a stake in Finland’s Flexens.

Samsung and the city of Oxford in the UK have announced the trial of a neighborhood heat pump scheme in Rose Hill, Oxford. The project aims to connect communities to local installers, helping to remove key barriers to heat pump uptake, including cost. Up to 150 Samsung air-source heat pumps will be installed at a reduced price of GBP 2,600 ($3,185) each.

SolarinBlue has deployed the first units of an offshore PV pilot plant in the Mediterranean Sea, 1.5 km off the port of Sète, France.

The latest edition of Solar Solutions, the largest solar trade show in the Netherlands, showed that the Dutch PV market is set to stabilize in terms of volumes, while preparing to integrate more heat pumps and storage. The solar sector is asking to move away from net metering to create a more resilient distributed-generation PV market.

Germany’s Bosch has developed an air-source heat pump that uses propane (R290) as the refrigerant. It can produce between 3.9 kW and 6.7 kW of heat, and domestic hot water to a temperature of up to 75 C. It says the heat pump can be paired with rooftop solar to maximize self-consumption.

Solitek has revealed plans to build a new manufacturing facility in Benevento, Italy.

Midsummer and researchers from the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), say that their new tandem PV cell is suitable for the company’s Duo production equipment, which makes 56 mm x 156 mm CIGS cells on a flexible stainless steel substrate.

Iberdrola is using a springer spaniel in a solar park to smell electrical problems that could lead to power cuts. It is also using a robotic dog to detect and analyze faults in substations.