residential PV

The United Kingdom’s cumulative installed solar capacity reached 15.13 GW by the end of May, with 480 MW added between January and May 2023.

The high temperatures registered in the third week of July caused demand record peaks in Spain and Italy on July 19 and demand increases in other markets. In France, the weekly photovoltaic energy production was the highest in history, but in most markets, solar and wind energy production fell. All these factors, together with the increase in CO2 prices, favored electricity markets prices to be above those of the previous week in most markets.

Scientists from India conceived a new system for crop growth in remote areas with no connection to the power grid. It consists of a PV panel, add-on module hardware (AOMH), a battery, step-down DC-DC converters, system power devices, automation, and sensor elements. For climate control, it also comprises a water pump, a ventilation fan for CO2 assimilation, sprinkler foggers, and drop irrigation solenoids.

Sekisui House-W is testing a pilot project consisting of a residential PV system, a small-sized electrolyzer, hydrogen-absorbing alloy tanks, and a fuel cell. The company said the hydrogen storage alloys used in the project have higher energy density than battery storage.

Scientists in Korea have proposed to use an algorithm that simulates the behavior of foraging bees to shape a new grid-forming inverter design. The approach is designed for both grid-connected and islanded inverters.

Germany’s Fraunhofer Institute for Applied Solid State Physics (IAF) has developed an ultra-efficient circuit topology for voltage converters with an electrical efficiency of 99.74%. The tech could considerably raise the coefficient of performance for electrocaloric heat pumps and the scientists are now considering components based on semiconductor gallium nitride (GaN) for higher power density and efficiency.

Germany installed more than 1 GW of new PV systems in June alone. Its cumulative installed PV capacity hit 73.8 GW at the end of the first half of this year.

In a new weekly update for pv magazine, Solcast, a DNV company, presents the solar irradiance data it collected for northern Europe in the first week of July. The data show that an unseasonal storm created by a strong low pressure system moving across from England into the North Sea had a strong impact on solar power generation in the Netherlands and Denmark.

Tesla owners can select a feature in an app to set their Powerwall batteries to solely charge their vehicles on excess stored PV capacity.

Luxembourg has kicked off its second tender for C&I solar projects ranging in size from 30 kW to 5 MW. It is offering rebates of up to €745 ($835) per kilowatt installed and up to 55% of the total cost of buying and installing systems.