Western Europe

Denmark’s Eurowind Energy has signed a deal for 65 MW of solar in central Portugal, split equally between 11 projects. Construction is expected to begin before the second quarter of 2025.

The French energy regulator says in a new report that France allocated about 5.55 GW of PV capacity through its auction mechanism for large-scale solar between 2011 and 2013. Despite falling solar module prices, the auction mechanism did not lead to cheaper PV electricity or lower project costs.

The Netherlands is preparing to end its net-metering scheme, prompting two Dutch research institutes to study the potential impact on PV system profitability. They found that increasing self-consumption rates from 30% to 60% would keep profitability levels stable.

Solevi, a German electroluminescence (EL) inspection company, has launched drone-based electrical inspection services for rooftop solar installation in Germany with plans to automate further and expand geographically.

Researchers in the United Kingdom have presented a new heat pump system that may avoid reducing heat supply during defrosting operations. The proposed concept can reportedly execute defrosting operations while ensuring continuous heating by condensing the refrigerant in the frosted evaporator.

King Abdullah University of Science and Technology researchers have told pv magazine that hydrogen storage pipelines and gravel could become a reality in lakes or water reservoirs in Europe, the United States, Japan, or China within 10 years. “The technology required to implement the proposed system is available, simple and cheap,” they said.

Venice-based 9-tech has developed a thermomechanical process to recycle end-of-life PV panels, with early results showing an 87% recovery yield of materials such as silicon, copper, and silver.

A group including scientists from Insititute for Solar Energy Research Hamelin (ISFH) and German PV equipment manufacturer Centrotherm has developed a POLO back junction solar cell by using an industrial plasma enhanced chemical vapor deposition (PECVD) system with a low-frequency plasma source. The device achieved a slightly higher efficiency than a reference device fabricated via more expensive atomic layer deposition (ALD).

A research paper from scientists at Swansea University describes their tool for analyzing thermodynamic limits of organic semiconductor-based photovoltaics (OPVs). One of the findings was that semi-transparent solar PV deployed in greenhouses may deliver comparable performance to conventional crystalline silicon PV.

Italy’s Ministry of the Environment and Energy Security (MASE) says it has received 643 bids totaling 1.7 GW in its first agrivoltaic tender. About 56% of the proposals have come from the country’s sunny southern regions.