photovoltaics

Large scale PV projects selected in public tenders held by the Turkish authorities will be awarded a 10-year tariff of TRL0.32/kWh ($0.044). The tariff will be indexed to inflation and dollar-euro exchange rate.

The Israel Ministry of Energy and the Ministry of Agriculture have decided to implement a pilot research program to assess the feasibility of agrivoltaic projects in the country. The possibility of combining PV and agriculture in a land with limited land availability and increasing energy demand is considered a win-win solution by the government.

The NEM 3.0 program will run until the end of 2023 and will see the participation of residential, commercial and industrial prosumers as well as public entities and government ministries.

The feed-in tariff granted reduces each quarter, in line with how much solar capacity was installed in the previous three-month period.

Europium ions have been used by Chinese researchers to passivate both the perovskite and electron transport layer (ETL) films of a MAPbI3 perovskite solar cell. As a result, the device’s efficiency was raised by approximately 1.5%. The dual passivation approach also achieved an increase in the cell’s fill factor and open-circuit voltage.

Denmark’s Better Energy is building the PV facility in Denmark’s southernmost region. Danish pharmaceutical company Lundbeck has agreed to buy the power generated by the plant over a seven-year period.

Tests by 7X Energy show that ground cover material showed promise, but projects will likely still need to prove the long-term durability, degradation rates, and validation of installation labor and O&M.

Dutch transmission system operator Tennet, which also serves Germany, is planning to create flexible electricity demand and reduce grid congestion by promoting the use of smarter heating systems and heat pumps that can also be powered by solar and wind energy. According to its experts, intelligent control of heat pumps may result in the creation of between 0.5 and 1 GW of temporary grid flexibility by 2030.

Spanish developer Isigenere has built a 338 kW floating array on the surfaces of two adjacent ponds in the Netherlands. The plant relies on a special mounting system design that avoids contact between the solar panels and the sides of the pond.

A Russian-Italian research group has developed a two-dimensional transition metal carbide, known as MXenes, to collect photocurrent in perovskite cells. The cells were built with an inverted configuration and are based on a nickel(II) oxide hole transporting layer. The scientists claim that the doping technique allowed them to increase the efficiency of the cell by more than 2%.