Australia

With silver prices rising, more large solar manufacturers are expected to switch to copper for cell metallization. Radovan Kopecek of ISC Konstanz tells pv magazine that he expects the entire industry to follow. Ning Song of the University of New South Wales says a small efficiency tradeoff may be acceptable if the cost savings are significant and do not introduce new reliability risks.

Researchers from Australia’s national science agency are working with Malaysian authorities to assess how different battery chemistries perform under tropical conditions, including high temperatures, humidity, and corrosion, and how these factors affect durability, safety, and cost effectiveness.

The Australian firm has introduced single-phase 5 kW and 6 kW AC output storage systems, as well as three-phase 10 kW and 12 kW models. Storage capacities of the new products range from 5 kWh to 40 kWh.

Scientists in China have developed a novel missingness-aware power forecasting method that leverages signal decomposition, multi-scale covariate interaction, and multi-domain collaborative transfer learning. The approach reportedly improves average forecasting accuracy by 15.3%.

Researchers in India have developed two solar tracker optimization techniques can purportedly increase power generation by up to 54.36% when combined. One uses a light sensor and the other relies on data from GPS and a real-time clock.

Scientists in Hong Kong have developed a patch that effectively cools down PV panels and utilizes waste heat for freshwater production. It has three layers: an atmospheric water harvester, a thermal regulation layer, and an adhesive layer. Maximum power density reportedly increased by over 28% in a folded version of the ultra-cooling patch.

Australia is tracking towards 75% electricity from solar and wind in 2030, which makes it a global energy transition pathfinder. Pathfinders are important because they learn to solve new problems and disprove misinformation and disinformation.

Researchers have used mixed-integer linear programming-based multi-objective optimization to optimize 30,912 unique scenarios showing heat pumps operating in combination with PV power. The optimization modeling was conducted under day-ahead spot market prices terms.

Researchers in Australia have developed a simplified residual network-based architecture method to filter out noise from electroluminescence images of PV modules. The proposed technique reportedly enhance the accuracy and efficiency of automated inspection systems for utility-scale PV plants.

Researchers have designed a novel multigeneration energy system that provides five outputs, namely electricity, hydrogen, cooling, heating, and hot water. The system is mainly powered by a solar heliostat system and incorporates compressed air and pumped hydro storage technologies for storing surplus power.