Solar

Zhonghuan Semiconductor has ramped up wafer prices, China Resource Power has secured 5GW of solar panels, and GCL-Poly is preparing to rebrand as GCL Technology Holdings. China’s Guangxi Zhuang region, meanwhile, has announced plans to deploy 16GW of PV.

An international research team has designed a carbon-based perovskite solar cell without a hole transport layer. Two plasmonic nanoparticles – Ag@SiO2 and SiO2@Ag@SiO2 – were added to the cell photoactive layer, in addition to a copper(I) thiocyanate (CuSCN) interlayer at the perovskite-carbon interface.

AC Energy, the renewable energy unit of Philippines-based conglomerate Ayala Corp., has finished building the 72MW Arayat-Mexico PV plant on the island of Luzon, in cooperation with Manila-based Citicore Power.

Empresas Públicas de Medellín is seeking engineering, procurement, and construction specialists to work on an 83MW solar plant in Colombia. The project secured a 15-year power purchase agreement in the nation’s latest auction and is scheduled to go online by Jan. 1, 2023.

The Moldovan authorities plan to select projects in a new 230MW renewables auction on a “first come, first served” basis. Installations will be assigned a 15-year fixed tariff. State-owned energy distributor Energocom will be the sole buyer of the clean electricity from the planned projects.

Australia’s largest hybrid solar and battery project, the New England Solar Farm and Battery Project in northern New South Wales, reached a new milestone over the weekend, following the delivery of the first of two massive 250 MVA transformers.

Tata Power Renewables Energy Ltd. (TPREL), a unit of Tata Power, has commissioned a 300MW solar plant in the Indian state of Gujarat. It is purportedly the largest PV project with single-axis trackers in the country.

Germany’s Ostermeier H2ydrogen Solutions has developed an electrolyzer that works with tap water, with bottles to store hydrogen and a fuel cell or a Wankel engine to produce electricity. The system has a capacity ranging from 1kW to 100 kW, which corresponds to hydrogen production of 0.2-20 Nm3/h.  

US energy specialist Enphase will produce micro-inverters at a Flextronics factory in Timisoara, Romania, from the first quarter of 2023.

French solar company TSE has developed an agrivoltaic rotating canopy that allows large agricultural machinery to move under the panels. The solution consists of a rotating structure that can host bifacial solar modules at a height of more than 5.5 meters, with a four-post structure measuring 27 m x 11 m.