Western Europe

Engie will deploy three giant batteries across three different parts of Belgium. All of the facilities will be able to provide power for up to four hours.

Swedish researchers have developed a method to recycle valuable metals from flexible thin film copper-indium-gallium-diselenide (CIGS) solar cells under mild leaching conditions. They showed that 100% of silver and 85% of indium can be recovered after 24 hours of leaching at room temperature using two moles of nitric acid.

Around 90,000 of the accepted applications in the latest round of Austria’s rebate scheme came from homeowners, and approximately 30,000 include the installation of battery storage.

The UK Energy Research Center says that the total installed cost of air-source heat pumps could fall by 20% by 2030. Non-equipment costs may decline by 30%, while equipment costs alone could drop by 17%.

Germany added 2.65 GW of new PV capacity in the first three months of this year. In March alone, the nation’s new PV additions hit 944 MW.

Sinn Power is offering new tiltable solar panels for vertical PV systems in nature reserves and water-protection areas. They are not anchored to the ground and use a pendulum weight to return to their proper positions when hit by strong winds.

The Flemish authorities have allocated a budget of €3 million ($3.3 million) for the first round of its solar rebate scheme. The call is open to homeowners, businesses, public organizations, and energy communities.

Ascent Solar says its acquisition of Flisom will triple its production capacity.

SMA says its total inverter capacity will double to 40 GW once its new factory is fully operational in Niestetal, Germany.

An international research group has made translucent perovskite solar cells to maintain decent levels of average visible transmittance (AVT) while offering higher efficiency. They tested different module and cell configurations and produced a two-terminal, perovskite-perovskite tandem device with an efficiency of 17.7% at 12% AVT.