Energy

Spain recorded more than 20 GW of installed solar capacity at the end of last year, according to recently published data from Wiki-Solar. The website’s founder claims that the country is becoming a PV powerhouse as utility-scale developers increasingly roll out projects.

Germany’s Boreal Light says it has installed a desalination plant in Mykolaiv, Ukraine. It claims that the system – which uses 560 W solar modules to produce 125 cubic meters of clean water per hour – is Europe’s largest PV-powered desalination project.

The Israeli planning regulator says that some storage facilities will not need permit approvals over the next 18 months.

The battery storage system has 30 percent more power and capacity when compared to the German company’s previous model. The solution is particularly suitable for use in charging infrastructure, food-retail and commercial areas with high power peaks, the company claims.

Swiss 3S, the Switzerland-based manufacturer, is offering the new half-cell BIPV module in four sizes, ranging from 24 half-cells to 48 half-cells. The rated output is up to 225 W.

Scientists have developed a machine-learning model – utilizing K-Means and long short-term memory techniques – that aims to overcome ‘fault detection and classification’ in the operation and maintenance of large-scale solar PV farms.

In the third week of October, European electricity market prices were stable, with an upward trend in most cases compared to the previous week. However, in the MIBEL market, prices fell due to high wind energy production, which reached an all time record in Portugal and the highest value so far in 2023 in Spain.

Brazil-based VedantaESS has agreed to buy EnerVenue’s energy storage vessels for use in utility-scale, distributed-generation and isolated microgrid applications.

Around 392 GW of photovoltaics will be added in 2023. This is more capacity than all worldwide nuclear power plants in operation in 2022, which was 371 GW cumulatively.

Some see merchant solar as risky, but investors are increasingly snapping up Europe-based merchant PV opportunities for “huge profits,” a researcher from the International Energy Agency Photovoltaic Power Systems Program tells pv magazine.