BIPV solar facade on high-rise building to produce 58 MWh annually
The 25-meter building facade building with 120 solar modules uses SolarEdge optimizers to overcome shading from neighboring buildings.
Chinese PV Industry Brief: Canadian Solar starts production of independently developed inverters
The Chinese-Canadian module maker said its new inverters will have a power output ranging from 5 kW to 125 kW. GCL Integration, meanwhile, announced plans to build a 20 GW solar module factory and Longi said it shipped 60 GW of wafers in the first nine months of this year.
PV InfoLink forecasts polysilicon prices to be halved by end of 2023
The consulting firm expects prices to decline gradually through the first semester of 2023, followed by an accelerated decline in the second half of the year, with prices falling from the current CNY 300 ($36.64)/kg to below CNY 150/kg by the end of 2023. Polysilicon production capacity may increase from 500 GW in 2022 to 975 GW next year.
Alpine vs. urban solar
A group of Swiss researchers has shown that optimized alpine PV installations could offer revenues that are on average 20% higher than those of standard, urban, installations. Furthermore, they found that the Swiss Alps have the potential to host about 1 GW of solar capacity offering revenues 33% higher.
Tandem perovskite-silicon solar cell achieves 23.5% efficiency via novel anti-reflective coating
Korean scientists utilized an anti-reflective coating based on silicon dioxide (SiO2) nanoparticles and large phosphor particles to increase diffuse light transmittance in a tandem perovskite-silicon PV device. The device’s efficiency improved from 22.48% to 23.50%.
OCI raises capacity of US solar panel factory from 210 MW to 1 GW
OCI said its US unit, Mission Solar Energy, would begin production of M10 PV panels at its Texas manufacturing facility in 2023.
Netherlands may add 3.3 GW of new solar this year
According to state-run agency RVO, solar may reach 17.6 GW of installed capacity by year-end, thus becoming able to cover more than 12% of the country’s electricity demand.
China’s solar cell production capacity may reach 600 GW by year-end
The Asia Europe Clean Energy (Solar) Advisory revealed that most of the planned new solar cell production capacity relates to high-efficiency n-type cell technologies such as TOPCon and HJT.
Determining solar cells’ optical properties with conventional flatbed office scanners
Australian researchers have sought to measure solar cells’ optical properties via low cost office scanners and found they may offer results that are comparable to those of tools used in the PV industry.
Polypropylene absorber to simplify brine heat pumps’ adoption
German company Mefa Befestigungs- und Montagetechnik has developed absorbers made of polypropylene that are intended to simplify the use of brine heat pumps. The novel technology should make it possible to combine multiple heat sources, including water, earth, air and also ice storage all within a single system.
