Floating structure design for offshore PV
Researchers at the Norwegian institute Sintef are testing a special floating structure that Equinor wants to deploy in offshore waters. The structure is built with an anchoring system that is claimed to give the installation enough freedom to cope with the waves.
Solar revitalizes abandoned desalination plant in Spain
A new €99 million solar project will help the Rambla Morales desalination plant, which shut down in 2011, to resume operations by fall 2022.
German utility-scale PV tender concludes with lowest price of €0.0469/kWh
Germany wrapped up another oversubscribed tender for large-scale solar last week, as well as an innovation tender for storage-linked PV projects.
Solar pavement for historic square in Barcelona
The municipal government of Barcelona is supporting the development of a 50-square-meter pilot project to test the feasibility of PV-paving tech.
Offshore floating PV platform unveiled in the Netherlands
Dutch floating structure specialist Solarduck has built a pilot 65 kW floating PV array that will be connected to a 10 kW electrolyzer to produce hydrogen bonded with a liquid organic hydrogen carrier. The system is relying on the company’s proprietary floating technology that resembles an offshore oil platform.
Germany installed 548.6 MW of PV in March
In the first three months of 2021, newly installed solar capacity reached 1.42 GW.
Optimization algorithm for vertical agrivoltaics
Developed by Swedish scientists, the proposed algorithm is said to calculate a project’s ideal design by combining climatological data with figures on expected solar power generation, shading distribution, water for irrigation, and agricultural yield. Its creators spoke with pv magazine about the key parameters that the model seeks to determine, one of which is the optimal distance between the solar module rows depending on the kind of crop.
ITRPV: Large formats are here to stay
The 2021 edition of the International Technology Roadmap for Photovoltaics (ITRPV) was published today by German engineering association VDMA. The report, which forecasts technology trends across the solar industry, expects PERC to maintain its position as the dominant cell technology and notes that large wafer formats are here to stay.
The father of Spain’s solar tax works, now, for a PV company
The former Spanish industry minister, José Manuel Soria, has become the president of Island Green Power España SL, the Spanish unit of U.K.-based developer of large photovoltaic plants, Island Green Power.
Electric cars to store renewables in the Netherlands
We Drive Solar and Hyundai are planning to set up a network of 500 bi-directional EV recharging stations in the city and region of Utrecht. Through this technology, electric cars may contribute to the storage of renewable energy in a country affected by grid constraints.
