photovoltaics

An international team of scientists developed a technique to isolate individual sources of electrical ‘noise’ within a solar cell. Comparing the technique to being able to pick out a single voice within a 200-person choir, they say the technique will help to improve understanding of where efficiency losses occur within a cell, and effective ways to mitigate them.

The result was confirmed by Germany’s Institute for Solar Energy Research in Hamelin.

India’s solar capacity additions will surge in the 2021-22 fiscal year, led by a strong project pipeline. Tariffs will go up in line with rising module prices, but will remain competitive at less than INR 3/kWh ($0.040/kWh), according to a new report by ICRA.

The solar cell was fabricated with a special polymer that is able to passivate defects at the grain boundaries and interfacial surfaces, inhibit nonradiative recombination and charge-transport loss, and improve stabilities under moisture. The device exhibited a remarkable fill factor, of 0.862.

A group of international scientists has compared the hypothetical performance of three novel shapes of solar modules – pyramidal, hexagonal and conical – and has found the latter has the strongest potential in terms of thermal behavior. According to their findings, a cooling technique based on forced airflow is key to making these solar module shapes into a feasible solution.

Singaporean Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong said earlier this year that the city-state needs to “innovate and use technology” to overcome its resource scarcity problem. With one of the world’s largest floating PV arrays now in operation, it appears to be drifting in the right direction.

InterContinental Energy and CWP Global have proposed the use of 50 GW of solar and wind to annually produce either 3.5 million tons of green hydrogen or 20 million tons of green ammonia. The proposal follows the Australian federal environment minister’s recent rejection of environmental approvals for the 26 GW Asia Renewable Energy Hub.

The German companies plan to combine their tools for project planning and battery systems via a new interface. They aim to simplify the work processes of planners and installers.

Scientists demonstrated a perovskite-silicon tandem cell that reached 27% conversion efficiency. Though higher tandem cell efficiencies have been achieved, this represents a big jump in efficiency for those utilizing n-i-p architecture, which previously had not surpassed 22%.

The A-4 and A-3 auctions saw the participation of a huge amount of solar, wind, hydroelectric, and biomass projects.