Rooftop PV

South Korea’s LG Energy Solution says its new hybrid inverters are suitable for high-voltage and low-voltage configurations.

France’s new feed-in tariffs (FITs) for the second quarter range from €0.2395 ($0.2653)/kWh for installations below 3 kW in size to €0.1268/kWh for arrays ranging in capacity from 100 kW to 500 kW.

Clever-PV has developed a manufacturer-independent energy management solution for homes. The app is free to download from app stores and can be connected to PV systems, wall boxes, heat pumps, and other smart devices. This allows users to optimize the use of self-generated solar power.

Scientists in Italy have developed a 5 kW direct-expansion solar-assisted heat pump that uses alternatively two different evaporator technologies. The cooling of the PV module unit by CO2 evaporation increases power production by 8%.

The hail storms that occurred recently in northern Italy damaged several photovoltaic systems. pv magazine Italy retrieved a report from the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam from 2019 which tried to shed light on the damage caused to solar installations by hail by analyzing the effects of a severe hailstorm that occurred in the Netherlands in 2016. According to their assessments, damages to PV modules are mostly derived from hailstones of at least 3 cm in diameter.

Researchers in Canada have found that nearly zero-energy buildings (NZEBs) with on-site solar energy generation should not exceed an energy use intensity (EUI) of 50 kWh/m2a, which they said corresponds to a maximum of 10 floors. They also ascertained that the maximum permitted EUI by net-zero energy status is 17–28 kWh/m2a.

India deployed 6.8 GW of solar in the first half of 2023. The rooftop solar segment had 2,294 MW of capacity additions, which is higher than the total rooftop PV installations recorded in 2022.

Vaulta, an Australian battery tech company, has developed its first dedicated residential battery. The small-scale energy storage system can purportedly operate for 4,000 cycles, with an 80% depth of discharge.

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.