World

South Korea’s SK is developing battery chargers with integrated battery diagnosis, Australian battery specialist Xelectric Power and Germany’s Mobilespace have launched a truck-mounted battery, and BMW Group has revealed plans to build assembly lines for high-voltage batteries next to its new vehicle plant in Hungary.

A group of German companies plans to set up a 500 MW electrolyzer for a 1 GW green hydrogen project in the North Sea. US scientists, meanwhile, have engineered a light-activated nanomaterial to convert ammonia into hydrogen, and Canadian researchers have unveiled a new way to structure catalysts for fuel cells.

Freight costs fell for the 39th straight week to account for roughly 4% of solar module costs – close to pre-pandemic levels. PV consultant Asier Ukar tells pv magazine that this trend will likely continue over the short term.

Germany-based Bauer Solar has launched a bifacial glass-glass module series with an output of 420 W to 430 W. The new series has 108 monocrystalline n-type half cells and an efficiency of 21.51% to 22.02%.

Scientists in Thailand have used microwaves to separate broken glass from PV panels. The process can be performed at temperatures ranging from 45 C to 55 C.

Globeleq has revealed plans to build a green hydrogen facility in the Suez Canal Economic Zone, and Air Liquide has agreed to run a hydrogen production unit for TotalEnergies in France. Doosan Fuel Cell, meanwhile, has said it will export 105 MW of hydrogen fuel cells to China by 2026.

Viridian Solar has released a new 7 kW wall-mounted EV charger, Honda has secured certification to run a virtual power plant in Germany, and Bosch has joined forces with IBM to use quantum computing to conduct research on electromobility materials.

The expected lifetime of PV inverters is significantly shorter than that of modules. In many projects, inverter replacement is included in financial calculations from the start, despite the high costs. Research is being conducted into the causes of faults to develop more durable inverters and components. But plant design can already improve the lifespan of inverters in use today, reports pv magazine Germany’s Marian Willuhn.

The Industrial Technology Research Institute (ITRI) and United Renewable Energy (URE) have developed a solar panel that can be easily dismantled to simplify the recycling process. They claim that 96% of the materials in the panel can be recovered, including all of the solar cells and front glass.

Researchers have looked at how hydrogen-induced contact resistance could help to reduce changes in series resistance, in either TOPCon or PERC solar cells. They said degradation occurs purely at the n-type silicon-to-silver (Ag) contact on both cell architectures.