photovoltaics

The UK government is proposing stronger cybersecurity rules for electricity and gas sectors, prompted by recent attacks on European energy infrastructure, including a recent incident involving solar power plants in Poland. The plans would extend baseline cybersecurity requirements to all licensed energy organizations and could also adjust compliance thresholds under NIS regulations.

Lithuania added approximately 600 MW of solar last year, taking total capacity to 3,040 MW. Technical permits have been issued for an additional 4 GW of solar but with grid congestion becoming a primary constraint, future deployments will be increasingly dependent on integration with storage technologies.

Kyocera Corporation will begin to supply electricity generated from its solar assets to Cosmo Energy Solutions from next month. It has also entered into a separate power purchase agreement with Cosmo Eco Power for energy generated from a 48 MW wind farm.

Researchers in Singapore have developed fully vacuum-processed ultrathin perovskite solar cells with absorber layers as thin as 10 nm, achieving high transparency and stable efficiencies up to 12%. These cells balance optical transparency and electrical performance, offering scalable, design-flexible photovoltaics suitable for seamless integration into buildings.

A study from the Institute for Essential Services Reform and Indonesia’s Coordinating Ministry for Economic Affairs explores how Indonesia can turn its target of deploying 100 GW of solar from mandate to mobilization.

Tongwei is partnering with GS-Solar and Golden Solar to develop a large-scale manufacturing facility for hybrid heterojunction back-contact (HBC) solar cells that combine heterojunction passivation, tunneling oxide and polysilicon structures used in TOPCon designs, and the grid-free front-side architecture typical of back-contact technologies.

Researchers in Finland found that dishwashing liquid reduces solar module transmittance and performance, leaving residues even after rinsing. They recommend avoiding its use for cleaning solar panels.

The European Public Prosecutor’s Office is investigating an unnamed solar company after it breached conditions of a public tender for the co-financing of small solar plants. The office says house searches were carried out this week by Slovenian police, leading to the seizure of documents, electronic data and devices.

Marine energy is renewable and generally predictable. It could thus compensate for the unplanned intermittency of solar and wind generation, its proponents argue. But several challenges still need to be overcome for the energy to become widely used.

Global solar PV continues its rapid growth, reaching around 650 GW in 2025, with record solar irradiation extremes across regions such as East Asia, India, and Latin America. With current production capacity and emerging technologies like perovskite-silicon tandem modules, PV is poised to surpass all other electricity generation technologies combined by the end of the decade.