Australian startup using second-life Nissan Leaf EV battery packs for storage
Relectrify, an Australian battery technology startup, has secured approval from the International Electrotechnical Commission for its ReVolve energy storage product, which opens the way for it to globally scale up its cell-level control tech.
Used, resold PV module prices aligned with general market, says US supplier
EnergyBin has released its annual PV module price index, which shows that module prices have fallen from their 2022 peak – but they are still more expensive than they were in 2020.
US-made solar panels could cut emissions by 30%, says study
Reshoring crystalline silicon PV panel manufacturing to the United States by 2035 could cut greenhouse gas emissions by 30% and energy consumption by 13% from 2020 levels, according to scientists from Cornell University.
Midsummer develops 24.9% efficient 4T tandem perovskite-CIGS solar cell
Midsummer and researchers from the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), say that their new tandem PV cell is suitable for the company’s Duo production equipment, which makes 56 mm x 156 mm CIGS cells on a flexible stainless steel substrate.
Paving the way for lead-free perovskite solar cells
Researchers in Singapore have developed a perovskite solar cell via a new method to synthesize the capping without using lead. The cell is capped with a zinc-based compound and reportedly has a conversion efficiency of 24.1%.
Solar grazing methods a centerpiece of inaugural agrivoltaics conference
Dan French, executive producer of the Solar Farm Summit, told pv magazine USA that more than 500 farmers, manufacturers, and community solar developers likely attended the first US agrivoltaics conference in Chicago last week.
Field data on heat pump efficiency, cold climate performance
Energy Systems Catapult has released interim data from air-source heat pump field monitoring in the United Kingdom between November 2020 and August 2022. Figures show that heat pumps are three times more efficient than gas boilers and that their median coefficient of performance (COP) on cold days is 2.44, compared to 2.80 year round.
Light redirecting film to improve heterojunction solar module performance
Finnish technology company Intelligent Control Systems has conceived a light redirecting film that purportedly reduces energy losses in the edge area of heterojunction solar cells. It claims the film may increase the power conversion efficiency of a heterojunction module by up to 0.75%.
Kesterite solar cell with transparent electrode achieves 11.4% efficiency
Chinese researchers fabricated a kesterite PV device using a transparent fluorine-doped tin oxide (FTO) substrate instead of substrates based on opaque Mo-coated soda lime glass. The cell has an open-circuit voltage of 0.522 V, a short-circuit current of 33.0 mA cm−2, and a fill factor of 68.55%.
CEA-INES, Enel achieve 26.5% efficiency for tandem perovskite-silicon solar cell
CEA-INES researchers and Enel have developed a new solar cell with an active area of 9 cm² and an open-circuit voltage above 1,880 mV. Their results improve on the 25.8% efficiency they achieved for the same kind of cell in December 2022.
