Renewable Energy

A new research paper proposes an optimal planning technique to identify the locations and sizes of electric-vehicle (EV) charging stations with controlled charging and hybrid wind and PV systems in a multi-microgrid.

pv magazine speaks to Jan Rosenow, principal and director of European programs for the Regulatory Assistance Project (RAP), about Europe’s top heat pump markets. He says Poland, Slovakia, Sweden, Germany and Finland posted the strongest growth in 2022.

An international consortium led by Israel’s Al-Zahrawi Society has launched the Regace project to develop agrivoltaic solutions for greenhouses. It will investigate the performance of a new tracking system across locations and climates and use carbon dioxide enrichment to improve crop yield.

Singapore-based VFLowTech is manufacturing compact, scalable vanadium redox flow batteries with 24/7 operation over lifespans of 25 years. It is now setting up a 200 MWh production line, with plans to scale up the production of modular, long-duration storage solutions.

Developers signed 8.4 GW of power purchase agreements (PPAs) in Europe in 2022, down 21% by volume from the preceding year, according to Pexapark’s newly published annual report. However, the Swiss consultancy notes that the 161 deals that were actually signed rose by 4.5% year on year, with Spain leading the way.

Indian scientists have developed a panel with an electrical efficiency of 13% and and thermal efficiency of 66.6 %. They built the system with a 100 W PV panel, a rectangular absorber, and a cooling technique based on a phase change material (PCM) that uses biochar derived from water hyacinth.

Iberdrola has secured a new 25 MW floating PV project in a tender in the municipality of Kurtzenhouse, Alsace, France.

Lightsource bp and “gen-tailer” Contract Energy plan to build up to 380 GWh of annual grid-scale PV generation in New Zealand by 2026. The companies have now been chosen to develop what will be one of the nation’s largest solar farms.

Scotland’s Gravitricity is developing gravity-based storage facilities in former mine shafts to stabilize electricity networks at 50 Hz, by responding to full power demand in less than a second. CEO Charlie Blair speaks to pv magazine about the potential and limitations of the tech, and how it compares to lithium-ion battery storage.

French scientists have developed a dataset to enable the creation of installation registries, by extracting small-scale PV metadata from overhead imagery. It can be used to provide training data for remote PV mapping algorithms and test the robustness of machine-learning models.