Energy

BayWa re has started working on a project featuring 1,440 semi-transparent PV modules at a fruit farm in Brumath, France. It says the plant will generate 464 MWh of electricity per year.

Masdar, the Abu Dhabi-based utility-scale PV project developer, has signed contracts to develop three solar and onshore wind projects in Azerbaijan, with a total capacity of 1 GW.

Belgium’s Innoptus Solar Team was the first car to cross the finish line this week in the 3,000 km Bridgestone World Solar Challenge. The team beat its 2019 winning time by 48 minutes.

A group of scientists across the world have created a list of recommendations that can help create solar neighborhoods. In a recently published study they highlight the importance of legislative frameworks and advanced computing.

In a new weekly update for pv magazine, Solcast, a DNV company, explores the impact of the now-lapsed Storm Babet as it traveled across the UK, Germany, Netherlands and Lithuania. The solar company urges that as large weather events like Storm Babet make landfall in the future, grid operators need to proactively prepare.

A US research group has developed stable emitters for high-temperature applications above 1,800 C, which could improve the efficiency of lab-scale thermophovoltaic systems. The framework showcases the potential to design application-specific metamaterials in high-temperature photonics using optimization and machine learning.

In a new weekly update for pv magazine, OPIS, a Dow Jones company, offers bite-sized analysis on solar PV module supply and price trends.

A group of ETH Zurich students are currently competing in the Bridgestone World Solar Challenge. They are racing a solar car, powered by monocrystalline silicon PV modules, through the Australian outback.

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.