Renewables

In a new weekly update for pv magazine, Solcast, a DNV company, reports that early 2026 will bring mixed solar conditions globally, with strong prospects in eastern Australia and eastern China, but cloudier-than-normal outlooks for much of Europe, Asia, and parts of the US early in the year.

Scientists have developed a floating PV digital twin system, trained on data from 155 physical experiments, using a two-tier artificial neural network (ANN) with a high-fidelity model and a reduced-order model. Predictive performance reached R2 values of 0.9996 for PV surface temperature and 0.9189 for power output.

The 60 MW/600 MWh storage project is co-located with a 250 MW photovoltaic plant allowing for a high level of green energy self sufficiency.

Scientists have simulated a residential building based on a real double-story house in the United Kingdom, combining rooftop agrivoltaics with onsite hydrogen production. Electricity generated by the solar system is used to produce hydrogen, which is then supplied to a hydrogen vehicle and insulated gasochromic smart windows.

CATL announced it expects a new trend of “sodium and lithium batteries shining brightly together.”

Scientists in Thailand have simulated an indirect-expansion photovoltaic-thermal-assisted heat pump and measured its performance under various cold water temperatures and tank sizes.

Scientists in China have constructed and tested a device that uses redox couples paired with a single triple-junction amorphous-silicon photoelectrode. When tested under a xenon lamp simulating one sun, the device achieved an average solar-to-electricity conversion efficiency of 4.2%.

Repurposed electric vehicle batteries have been used for the energy storage component of a solar and battery project that is now helping power operations at carmaker Nissan Australia’s aluminium casting plant in Victoria.

A team of Sweden-based researchers has developed a snow loss model to estimate snow-induced PV power losses on an hourly basis. The proposed approach relies solely on data from remote sensing sources, such as aerial imagery, LIDAR, and satellite data.

Glare from a nearby solar park forced temporary runway closures at Amsterdam Airport Schiphol, prompting Dutch authorities to order the removal of about 78,000 PV modules and apply anti-reflective film to others. The solar park operator, however, decided to replace all the panels. The largest portion of the removed, near-new modules have since been acquired by BM Energy and are expected to be redeployed in projects where glare is not a concern.