science

A new project offers a design and validation framework for renewables-based microgrid configurations that deliver electric vehicle fast charging, energy security, and value-added grid services.

The Scottish government wants to deploy renewable-powered heat pumps on at least 1 million homes and 50,000 non-domestic buildings by the end of this decade. For this purpose, it has created an advisory group and is now seeking to gather all potential stakeholders.

According to a new study from LUT University, domestic water heating costs may be reduced by combining rooftop PV with geothermal heat pumps. Scientists developed a control method to minimize these costs by taking advantage of cheap spot market electricity and maximized PV power generation, as well as considering heat demand, PV generation forecasts, and heat pump efficiency.

Solar projects that support native grasses can sequester more carbon than farmland alone.

The system is based on a power-to-gas hydrogen technology and is intended to enable one and two-family homes to have an independent power supply throughout the year.

US expert in environmental and energy policy Alexis Pascaris spoke with pv magazine about opportunities and barriers associated with agrivoltaics. Agrivoltaics are a very practical and advantageous alternative to large-scale solar, specifically in places where there are land-use constraints or needs for rural economic development, she explains. Differences in costs related to ground-mounted solar can typically be attributed to the raised racking systems or additional fencing, but these upfront investments in specialized hardware are eventually recovered as agrivoltaic systems produce dual-revenue streams.

The device was built by an international research team. The cell features a buffer layer based on zinc sulfide oxide and a low copper absorber. The cell showed an open-circuit voltage of 920 mV. And though a different material from the widely commercialized CIG selenide PV thin films, the researchers claim similar processes could be used in its large-scale manufacturing.

A €4.8 million EU-funded research project is aiming to develop a process that allows recovering all components of a photovoltaic module.

Building renovations may result in up to 51% space heating demand savings, according to recent research from Germany. Its authors claim that, if buildings are retrofitted and thermal energy storage and individual hybrid heat pumps with back-up gas boilers are applied on a large scale, significant heat cost reduction may be achieved across the whole of Europe.

Scientists in South Korea tested a new cathode material as part of a calcium-ion battery (CIB), achieving some impressive results. The material retained more than 90% of it initial capacity after 500 cycles, alongside some of the best performance results seen so far for this technology. The scientists say that this discovery opens up “an unexplored pathway toward the realization of stable and high-power cathodes in CIBs.”