Western Europe

Taking inspiration from the 3D photonic structures on a Morpho butterfly’s shimmering blue wings, scientists at Germany’s Fraunhofer Institute for Solar Energy Systems ISE have developed colored solar panels that can be incorporated into a building’s exterior practically invisibly while maintaining high efficiency.

Researchers in the Netherlands have investigated how carrier-selective contacts may help achieve stronger performance in back-contact (BC) crystalline silicon solar cells and have predicted efficiencies may reach up to 28.64%. Their analysis considered work function, energy barriers, and energy alignment across the stack of layers.

Switzerland is expanding rules for rooftop solar, energy storage, and energy communities to expand self-consumption and ease pressure on the grid. The new regulations, set to take effect in 2026, introduce updated tariffs, encourage battery storage, and allow local electricity trading.

In a new weekly update for pv magazine, Solcast, a DNV company, reports that cloud-bearing weather systems dominated the British Isles, significantly reducing irradiance across the UK and Ireland between 9 and 18 February 2025, when solar generation reached in the region its lowest levels relative to capacity in at least a decade.

The Spanish government allocated €1.2 billion ($1.26 billion) for seven green hydrogen clusters concentrated in Aragon and Andalusia. Meanwhile, an EU consortium started its work to develop diagnostic and monitoring tools for water electrolyzers.

Consultation ahead of seventh Contracts for Difference (CfD) allocation round proposes longer contract lengths in a bid to reduce strike prices and lower cost of finance for renewables projects. A wider target commissioning window for solar projects is also proposed, in response to larger capacity plants in the pipeline.

Sunbooster GmbH is offering 372 W flexible solar systems including inverters and cabling. The price for the smallest version is €500 ($524).

The French authorities intend to allocate 400 MW of PV capacity through the procurement exercise, which is open to PV installations exceeding 500 kW in size.

In the German state of Schleswig-Holstein, an explosion tore away the outer wall of a show home equipped with solar panels and a residential battery. The badly-damaged building, which was vacant at the time of the incident, will likely be demolished.

Six Fraunhofer institutes are developing new electrocaloric heat pumps that use elastocaloric heat pipes instead of compressors to extract heat from the sources. The first pilot systems developed by the research team achieved an electrical efficiency of 99.74%.