PV plant

A team of researchers have developed a domain adaption framework capable of transferring knowledge from solar power plants with abundant data to plants that need to be trained without labelled data. The framework has been tested at three solar power sites in Germany and was found to perform better than reference models.

Italy’s fire service has introduced binding guidelines for PV systems up to 1,500 V, adding rules on storage, spacing, compartmentalization, and maintenance.

Research simulating a solar tree farm within a coastal forest in South Korea found that solar tree structures could preserve 99% of forest cover when compared to a fixed solar farm built in the same area, without sacrificing power output.

Researchers have developed a maximum power point tracking algorithm based on the social hierarchy and hunting strategy of grey wolves. When tested under realistic shading conditions, the grey wolf optimizer achieved an average MPPT efficiency of 98.15%, significantly outperforming conventional MPPT methods.

The French government has awarded 165 projects at an average price of €0.07948 ($0.09315)/kWh in its latest ground-mounted PV tender.

In recent months, solar energy has been recognised by the EU Commission as critical grid infrastructure, with a growing awareness around cybersecurity in particular raising questions about Europe’s energy security. In this article, solar cybersecurity specialist Uri Sadot – Managing Director at SolarDefend and Elected Chairman of SolarPower Europe’s Digitalization Group – discusses what PV installers, developers, EPCs and system owners can do to better protect themselves – and the grid.

Scientists from Spain have developed a daylight electroluminescence method that uses other strings to supply current to the inspected string. It was simulated and then tested in two 50 MW PV plants. Comparative assessment against lab-electroluminescence resulted in acceptable diagnostic performance.

The country aims to promote modules manufactured in the EU with new tender criteria. To this end, the government has introduced non-price-related tender criteria, making it one of the first EU countries to implement the NZIA guidelines.

French uncrewed aerial systems (UAS) manufacturer Objectif Drone has developed a drone-based solar panel spray cleaning system for solar plant maintenance teams. It can be used on either rooftop PV or ground-mounted systems.

Scientists have developed a multi-scale method to assess vegetation conditions inside PV power plants. The research focused on nine PV plants in China across diverse climate zones. Compared to satellite estimates alone, the method reduces bias by 16.98%.