Renewables

New research from Poland has suggested installing 891 PV panels along the entire tram platform and inter-track spaces of four major transportation hubs. The analysis showed that the PV system could power all of the city’s tram stops, the passenger information system, and meet 10% of demand from service depots.

The International Solar Energy Society’s (ISES) Solar World Congress (SWC) has been held biennially since the 1970s, and in November 2025 will take place in Brazil. With the sharp and continuous drop in PV costs, photovoltaics has become the lowest-cost solution in Brazil and worldwide, and this is reflected in the number of articles accepted for presentation at the SWC. The Solar World Congress program has traditionally been dominated by presentations on solar radiation and solar thermal applications, but this year, photovoltaics is the focus of most of the accepted papers. In Brazil, where large-scale hydropower plants have traditionally dominated the electricity generation mix, PV is now the second-largest generating source, and the country is adding every year the equivalent of its largest hydropower plant Itaipu, which took more than 10 years to build and reach installed capacity.

A research team in Egypt has proposed a new architecture for kesterite solar cells using a copper oxide hole transport layer and optimized configuration. The simulated device had a maximum efficiency of 33.56%.

Brazilian scientists have investigated the potential of agrivoltaics on sugarcane fields and have found this combination may provide benefits in terms of both agricultural and electricity yield. Their results showed that under certain conditions the sugarcane yield below the panels can be higher than that of plots without PV.

Solar is so scalable, so versatile, that every single country in the world, every single human on the planet from the frozen North to the deepest rainforests, from the dry, arid plains of the Atacama to the buzzing metropolises of New York, Paris, São Paulo, Shanghai and Tokyo can benefit from it.

An international researc team has included an interlocked self-assembled monolayer in perovskite indoor PV to enhance its stability and durability. Fabricating cells, mini modules, and a prototype device of an electronic price tag, the novel structure was tested. It was found to exhibit a lifetime approaching 6,000 hours.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture has awarded billions in Rural Energy for America Program (REAP) grants for solar projects. Secretary Brook Rollins said the agency will no longer deploy funds to solar and wind projects.

Researchers in Egypt have developed new control strategies for managing frequency fluctuations during deloading of a photovoltaic plant. The proposed methodology combines a proportional–integral controller along with a rate of change of frequency controller.

Carrier, a US-based heating solutions provider, said its new AquaSnap 30RQM heat pump system can deliver a water temperature of up to 60 C. The modular system features a heating capacity of 70 kW to 1,125 kW and a cooling capacity of 77 kW to 1,237 kW. T

Wave power may emerge as a valuable renewable energy source given recent economic and technical projections indicating a substantial potential of wave energy, particularly in coastal and island regions. Wave and solar resources are complementary around the world and thus may lead to energy systems combining solar PV with wave power. Islands may benefit most from wave power added to solar PV.