Western Europe

Portugal’s recent PV auction marks a new era of battery storage for the country, says UK consultancy Everoze. It notes that the auction was so competitive that the winners had to cut their expected remuneration in the solar+storage category to negative values. It claims that the real winner is the government, as it is maximizing the value of scarce grid capacity, and argues that the auction could become a benchmark for nations with limited grid space.

The large-scale green hydrogen facility is being developed by Dutch energy company VoltH2 at the North Sea Port. The project is planned to be expanded to 100 MW.

An EU-funded research project coordinated by German research institute Helmholtz-Zentrum Berlin has tested several configurations for solar-powered hydrogen generation. First results showed which may be the most suitable PV technologies for electrolysis.

The German government is planning to tender 5.3 GW in the rooftop segment and 13.5 GW for large-scale PV projects.

Eco-Tec, an Austrian PV company, is cooperating with a startup, Meine Blumenwiese, to ecologically upgrade ground-mounted solar projects. The two companies aim to generate clean energy while also creating new habitats for a range of insects and animals.

According to a new study, PV may reach an installed power of 144.5 GW in Italy by the end of the first half of the century, followed by onshore and offshore wind with 59.6 GW and 17.6 GW, respectively. The research is based on a new computational model that identifies the best spatial distribution of renewable energy sources in an individual country or electricity system while avoiding problematic concentrations of technologies

The Austrian Institute of Technology, Fraunhofer ISE, and Forster Industrietechnik are developing a new rooftop PV system concept for motorways. They aim to harness the potential of underexploited road networks to generate electricity.

According to a British-Swedish research team, the down‐shifting process for solar glass manufacturing can be improved through the use of two dopant cations that produce no absorption bands. The doping with these compounds is said to reduce the UV transmission while also keeping the glass free from absorption in the visible and near-infrared ranges.

According to the latest figures from the Federal Network Agency, the country’s cumulative installed PV power has now reached 51.98 GW.

Endesa, the Spanish unit of Italian power group Enel, is using a new technology in the construction of three solar parks in southern Spain.