Research

The Australian Alliance for Energy Productivity (A2EP) has released a free, online estimation tool to aid Australian businesses in sizing heat pumps to replace gas boilers. The tool estimates the capex, opex, net savings, and payback time based on inputs about heating, cooling, location, and temperature requirements.

Chinese scientists have simulated a new photovoltaic-thermoelectric technology, based on radiative cooling and III-V solar cells, to generate electricity at night.

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.

Calvera Hydrogen has claimed that its new 45-foot hydrogen tube trailer has the largest capacity in the world, Universal Hydrogen has unveiled a hydrogen-powered regional aircraft, and Masdar has signed a green hydrogen production deal with Austrian utility Verbund.

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.

Saudi Arabia researchers claim to have improved the outdoor stability of a tandem perovskite-silicon solar cell by using proper encapsulation. By the end of the first year of operation, the cell’s fill factor remained above 70%.

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.

Ionblox says it will use $32 million of series B funding to support the buildout of a novel silicon anode electric vehicle battery.

Brazilian researchers have compared the environmental impact of two PV plants – one with polycrystalline solar modules mounted on fixed-tilt trackers, and another with the same modules mounted on single-axis trackers. The life cycle assessment shows the system with single-axis trackers reduced carbon gas emissions by 24%, land use by 20%, and water use by 7%.