Solar

Through the procurement exercise, the power utility is seeking proposals to deploy around 600MW of capacity that will have to start providing power in February 2026, and another 250MW to begin commercial operations in February 2027.

Genex Power says it is now ahead of schedule on the construction of a new engineering project to transform a retired gold mine site in Australia into a 250MW/2GWh pumped hydro energy storage facility.

Germany-based Linde Engineering has started up a full-scale pilot plant in Dormagen to showcase how hydrogen can be separated from natural gas streams using its membrane technology. Furthermore, Abu Dhabi-based renewable energy developer Masdar has teamed up with French energy giants Engie and Totalenergies on two separate hydrogen projects and Sweden’s nuclear power company OKG signed its first contract with an external buyer to enter the hydrogen market as a producer and supplier.

A research team has outlined an optimized array topology for agrivoltaic projects built with bifacial modules. According to its findings, the benefits of bifacial PV arrays are most prominent in stilt mounted projects, where modules are elevated considerably off the ground at over 2 m, thus allowing plenty of light to be absorbed by the rear PV side as well.

The National Energy Administration (NEA) reported this week that the newly installed PV capacity for the Chinese market reached around 53 GW last year. Of this capacity, around 29 GW comes from distributed generation projects. The country’s cumulative installed power reached 306 GW at the end of December.

According to Asia Europe Clean Energy (Solar) Advisory (AECEA), this huge capacity may not be met by actual demand in the global market. Furthermore, the consultancy reveals that solar module prices should reach a price level of up to RMB 1.75 ($028)/W by the second half of the year, and that in 2021 new PV additions totaled 53 GW with more than half of this capacity being delivered by distributed generation.

Researchers in India have built the 4T device with top and bottom cells based on large-area semi-transparent perovskite cells with copper metal contacts. Copper has been used instead of expensive gold with the aim of reducing the cell’s overall cost.

Solar farm operators are turning to AI-powered inspection to speed up the inspection process and improve accuracy. They use algorithms that can automatically detect solar panel defects from images.

Four new PV developments have been announced this week, adding to a growing list of renewable energy projects in the coal-dependent Eastern European country.

France-based FHE Group has developed a 2.5 kWh storage device that can store electricity as heat during the day and release this heat at night to power a heat pump for space heating and hot water. According to the manufacturer, it can retain over 95% of its initial performance after 20,000 cycles.