Western Europe

Drax Group said it will expand the pumped hydro storage capacity of the Cruachan Power Station by another 600 MW to 1,044 MW. However, the project will require greater policy support.

France’s new feed-in tariffs (FITs) for the second quarter range from €0.2395 ($0.2653)/kWh for installations below 3 kW in size to €0.1268/kWh for arrays ranging in capacity from 100 kW to 500 kW.

Clever-PV has developed a manufacturer-independent energy management solution for homes. The app is free to download from app stores and can be connected to PV systems, wall boxes, heat pumps, and other smart devices. This allows users to optimize the use of self-generated solar power.

Scientists in Italy have developed a 5 kW direct-expansion solar-assisted heat pump that uses alternatively two different evaporator technologies. The cooling of the PV module unit by CO2 evaporation increases power production by 8%.

The hail storms that occurred recently in northern Italy damaged several photovoltaic systems. pv magazine Italy retrieved a report from the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam from 2019 which tried to shed light on the damage caused to solar installations by hail by analyzing the effects of a severe hailstorm that occurred in the Netherlands in 2016. According to their assessments, damages to PV modules are mostly derived from hailstones of at least 3 cm in diameter.

Dutch gas supplier Gasunie says several market participants have reserved capacity in the first salt cavern for large-scale hydrogen storage near the Dutch city of Groningen. According to current planning, the first cavern will be operational by 2028.

The SeaVolt consortium says it will launch an offshore floating PV demonstrator off the Belgian port of Ostend. The main companies – Tractebel, DEME, Equans and Jan De Nul – say the anchored floating array will collect data for at least a year to scale up the tech.

The United Kingdom’s cumulative installed solar capacity reached 15.13 GW by the end of May, with 480 MW added between January and May 2023.

Enfoil is developing a CIGS thin film custom manufacturing business, targeting building-integrated PV applications, such as powering sensors or track & trace sub-systems in trucks. The company is a spinoff of Hasselt University and imec, the Belgian research institute.

CVE, a French developer, has deployed a solar plant based on PV modules ballasted on the ground. The installation will cover nearly 10% of the overall consumption of an industrial site in Châtillon-sur-Chalaronne, France.