Western Europe

The Fraunhofer Institute for Solar Energy Systems is assessing how a solar-powered heat pump system that uses waste heat from a distillery at a low-temperature level could be used to provide district heating. Waste heat is injected into an ice storage tank, to which heat pumps are connected on the source side.

An international research group has developed a perovskite solar panel on a 192 square-centimeter surface. The researchers claim the panel has one of the highest efficiencies reported at this size to date.

The European Court of Justice has told Solar Ileias Bompaina that it must pay the costs of both parties in a seven-year dispute stemming from the former Greek government’s move to reduce solar feed-in tariffs and claw back historic payments.

Australia’s Macquarie is leading a consortium that has reportedly tabled a €2.5 billion ($2.7 billion) bid for a clean energy business formed by French private equity houses InfraVia and Eurazeo.

Salzgitter has claimed a record efficiency level for its EU-funded GrInHy2.0 hydrogen project, which is based on solid oxide electrolysis cell tech. The high-temperature electrolyzer uses waste heat from the company’s steel production processes.

Researchers in Germany have built a perovskite-organic solar cell with low interfacial losses and a high open-circuit voltage. The device achieved an open-circuit voltage of 2.15 V, a short-circuit current of 14.0 mA cm−², and a fill factor of 80%.

Energy Dome’s emission-free energy storage method uses carbon dioxide in a closed loop charge/discharge cycle that can store and dispatch renewable energy onto the grid over periods from four to 24 hours.

In other news, Airbus and Kawasaki Heavy Industries plan to work together to prepare a hydrogen-fueled ecosystem, while Storgrundet Offshore and Lhyfe want to build a 600 MW hydrogen production plant in Sweden. Furthermore, Canada-based First Hydrogen has identified four industrial sites in the United Kingdom and is advancing discussions with landowners to secure land rights to develop green hydrogen production projects.

A Spanish-Italian research group has developed a solid-state thermal-to-electric energy converter based on hybrid thermionic-photovoltaics (TIPV) for different applications. It consists of a three-terminal TIPV device made with a tungsten (W) thermionic cathode, a PV/anode structure made of an indium phosphide (n-InP) anode, and a photovoltaic cell based on indium gallium arsenide (InGaAs).

New research has categorized all existing fault detection and localization strategies for grid-connected PV inverters. The overview also provides a classification of various component failure modes and their potential causes in a tabular form.