Energy

In a major milestone for the two-year-old Series A startup and the broader stationary energy storage sector, US-based Peak Energy has signed a supply agreement potentially worth more than $500 million.

Last year, German network operators received 9,710 connection requests for battery storage systems planned for commissioning at the medium-voltage level. These requests correspond to a total of 400 GW/661 GWh. At the transmission network level, large-scale battery storage projects with a combined capacity of 51 GW have already been approved for development in the coming years.

Researchers in the Middle East have developed a fuzzy logic controller that simultaneously optimizes the tilt angle of PV systems and performs maximum power point tracking (MPPT). Year-long simulations indicate that the proposed approach increases power generation by approximately 20%.

California-based Apparent Inc. has unveiled a new water heater that can reportedly offset 100% of a home’s water heating cost. The system uses low-voltage DC electricity generated by conventional solar panels and a cloud based, machine learning platform that manages energy in real-time.

The Chinese manufacturer said the product line includes five models with outputs ranging from 25 kW to 50 kW, supporting charge and discharge currents of up to 150 A.

While solar modules and batteries have become icons of rapid progress, most energy models are still stuck in the past. A new global analysis shows that the cost of renewable energy has fallen far faster than expected. Solar PV, wind power, and battery technologies have already reached price levels that models once placed many decades ahead – a misplaced pessimism that risks misdirecting billions in climate investment and could distort long-term defossilization strategies.

The Chinese company says that its new ESA series is available with a hybrid inverter ranging from 3 kW to 10 kW and storage capacities of 5 kWh to 48 kWh. The IP66-rated product supports an MPPT current of up to 20 A on the PV side and allows 200% PV oversizing, according to the manufacturer.

Researchers in China developed a large-scale PV-thermal heat pump system using a liquid overfeed method that reportedly improves both thermal and electrical efficiency. Field tests showed up to a 4.81% boost in power generation and significantly reduced pressure losses compared to conventional systems.

The PPA price for pure photovoltaic projects has fallen by 20% over the past year, making such contracts less competitive. However, clear structures for bankable hybrid PPAs are now beginning to take shape, says Pieter van der Meulen, Senior Account Manager at LevelTen Energy, in an interview with pv magazine.

Scientists in China have developed a new deep learning model based on the so-called “You Only Look Once” algorithm, which requires only one forward propagation pass through the neural network to make predictions,