Aqueous organic flow battery for renewables storage
The Chinese Academy of Sciences has fabricated a kilowatt-scale aqueous redox flow battery with a capacity of 80 mA cm-2 over 500 cycles. The researchers claim that it is a promising candidate for large-scale energy storage.
Customizable sticker to turn solar panels into advertising billboards
An Italian startup has created a fully recyclable sticker that can be used to cover solar panels on rooftops or facades. It replicates high-definition images that can help to improve the aesthetics of solar arrays or turn PV facades into advertising billboards.
Australian researchers patent additive for perovskite’s stability problem
University of New South Wales (UNSW) researchers in Australia have discovered a low-cost way to stabilize perovskite solar cells with a triple function additive. Perovskite cells have shown the best stability results with it so far.
MIT scientists produce new organic photovoltaic fabrics
US researchers have developed a thin-film organic solar module on a vapor-deposited releasable substrate made of parylene. The device could be used as a wearable fabric, or to bring solar generation to remote locations.
Inverted perovskite solar cell with 22.15% efficiency, 83.92% fill factor
Chinese scientists have used daminozide as an interlayer and additive to make a perovskite solar cell with a p-i-n structure. It has the highest efficiency and highest fill factor for a polycrystalline, MAPbI 3-based inverted perovskite solar cell to date.
US to deploy 30 GW/111 GWh of grid-scale energy storage by 2025
The US energy storage market hit an inflection point in 2020. The Energy Information Administration expects the deployment of grid-scale storage to pick up over the next three years.
PV system fires potentially exacerbated by gap between solar panels, rooftops
Norwegian researchers have published a new study showing that the space between solar panels and rooftop surfaces might play a critical role in contributing to PV system fires.
Novel sodium-sulfur battery for renewables storage
A Chinese-Australian research group has created a new sodium-sulfur battery that purportedly provides four times the energy capacity of lithium-ion batteries. They say it is far cheaper to produce and offers the potential to dramatically reduce energy storage costs.
Cooling solar panels with cold steam from ultrasonic thermoelectric generators
Iranian researchers have looked at how ultrasonic thermoelectric generators could be used to lower the operating temperature of solar modules. Their new system can generate cold steam via ultrasonic piezoelectrics in a simple batch system.
Paths to commercial success for renewable energy tech
Analysts have studied lab-to-market pathways for clean energy technologies, including First Solar’s cadmium-telluride thin-film solar modules.
