Western Europe

Two “ethical” hackers from the Dutch Institute of Vulnerability Disclosure (DIVD) have identified six vulnerabilities in Enphase IQ Gateway devices. The researchers are now working with the US inverter manufacturer to address the bugs in the next version of the product.

Renewables developer Q Energy has closed €50.4 million ($55.7 million) in financing for a 74.3 MW floating solar plant in northeastern France. Construction is already underway, with commissioning planned for the first quarter of next year.

Sweden’s Enerpoly has ambitious plans to make its 6,500m2 plant the center of global and European zinc-ion battery innovation. It is aiming for final capacity of 100 MWh annually by 2026.

Rabot Charge, a German renewable energy supplier, says the average spot electricity price in August rose slightly from July to €0.082 ($0.09)/kWh. The increase was due to a slightly below-average share of renewable sources in grid electricity.

Conceived by French scientists, the novel system uses ensemble learning and does not require anything more than a commercially available optimizer. Before it makes a decision, the method combines K nearest neighbors, support vector machine, and decision tree learning. Accuracy is reportedly up to 89%.

Dutch researchers used dynamic modelling to uncover the demand for silicon-based PV materials used in a wide range silicon PV technologies, including perovskite-silicon tandem and back-contact modules. The model included calculating the impact of advances in module efficiency and material intensity, as well as circular closed loop recycling.

The 9 cm² cell consists of a top cell based on a perovskite absorber and a bottom cell with a heterojunction (HJT) structure. The results improve on the 28.4% efficiency CEA and Enel achieved for the same kind of cell in December.

The US Department of Energy has announced $62 million for 20 projects to accelerate hydrogen technology, while international researchers have revealed how hydrogen injection into existing natural gas infrastructure could affect 115 million gas meters in the European Union.

Helen, a Helsinki-based energy company, has unveiled plans for a large-scale district heating plant complex. Germany’s MAN Energy Solutions is supplying a 33 MW air-to-water heat pump, the largest ever used for a district-heating plant, with ambient air and renewable electricity for heat generation.

The French government says the nation installed 1.05 GW of new solar in the second quarter, bringing the country’s cumulative installed PV capacity to 22.2 GW by the end of June.