Renewables

Scientists in Canada studied romaine lettuce growth under cadmium telluride thin-film solar modules with varying transparency and photosynthetically active radiation, and found Germany’s regulatory framework most effective for maximizing agrivoltaic benefits.

Arizona holds a Guinness World Record for “most sunshine” and holds no significant gas reserves. However, despite hundreds of objections, its commission voted to repeal its renewable energy standard, letting its utilities take the wheel and head back toward more gas.

This week Women in Solar+ Europe gives voice to Vida Engmann, Asssociate Professor at the University of Southern Denmark. Shes says ender bias affects everything from research funding and journal reviews to hiring and promotion. “It also influences our own career choices, shaped by societal expectations about roles in domestic work, childcare, and leadership,” she states.

Scientists have created a solar cabinet dryer for mango slices, with PV-powered forced convection. Placing mango slices of different thicknesses inside, they have measured the operation of their device against two reference methods and have found that thermal efficiency reached 30%.

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.