rooftop solar

Solar pre-cooling consists of using residential PV systems to run air conditioners to pre-cool residential and commercial buildings. It offers benefits in terms of mitigating low minimum demand in electricity networks, flattening the grid’s net demand profile, and reducing electricity bills.

In a new weekly update for pv magazine, Solcast, a DNV company, presents the solar irradiance data it collected for South America in July. The data show that South America experienced temperatures up to 15 C above winter averages, and that most of the continent saw higher than normal radiation. The Chilean Andine, especially Altiplano in the Atacama Desert, which has recorded the highest incidence of irradiance in the world, recorded values 10% above normal.

Brazil installed 2.3 GW of large-scale solar and 4.5 GW of distributed-generation PV in the first six months of this year.

Biwatt Power, a Chinese manufacturer, has developed new residential sodium-ion batteries with an efficiency rate of 97% and a projected lifespan of more than 3,000 cycles.

The University of Sevilla has designed a PV-powered “smart” canopy that activates a thermal conditioning system to reduce extreme heat by up to 20 C.

Researchers in Taiwan are proposing a market-based incentive scheme to help property owners to move from using their roofs for illegal dwellings to rooftop solar power generation. They found these owners should be rewarded for solar power generation but also be compensated for the income loss due to the removal of illegal rentals.

New figures from the Israeli authorities show that the country continues to deploy rooftop PV systems at a rapid pace. New rooftop installations hit 703 MW in 2022, up significantly from 537 MW in 2021 and 296 in 2020.

A fire occurred broke out this week at a layer poultry farm in Volpago del Montello, Italy. The blaze, which killed more than 20,000 birds, reportedly may have originated from a PV system on the premises.

The French government says it plans to install 48.1 GW of solar by 2030 and 140 GW by 2050. About 45 GW of the mid-century total will be generated via installations on wasteland, while 35 GW will come from rooftop installations.

Scientists in the Netherlands have assessed how the so-called blue-green roofs can help reduce the operating temperature of rooftop PV panels and have found they provide a significant cooling effect. The irrigation system used for the research project relies on an additional water supply sourced from grey water from showers that is transformed into irrigation water.