A good year for solar: Agrivoltaics in vineyards
French agricultural PV specialist Sun’Agri has revealed the results of tests run on a solar plant integrated with viticulture. During heat waves, the company said, vines shaded by solar panels continued to grow and needed less water.
Focus on the negatives: A new path to highly efficient tandem cells
Scientists in the U.S. and South Korea have identified what could be a new route to high-efficiency perovskite-silicon tandem solar cells. Through engineering negatively charged particles in the passivation layer, the group made a tandem cell with 26.7% efficiency. With further tweaks to the silicon layer they expect to be able to surpass 30%.
Sweden deployed 287 MW of solar last year
The nation’s cumulative installed solar capacity reached 698 MW at the end of December. Around 19,000 new PV systems were added last year.
Trina announces its first shipment of 500 W modules
The Chinese manufacturer says the first products exited the factory 11 days after mass production started. The panels were launched by the company late last month.
Cooling down PV panels with water
France’s Sunbooster has developed a technology to cool down solar modules when their ambient temperature exceeds 25 C. The solution features a set of pipes that spread a thin film of water onto the glass surface of the panels in rooftop PV systems and ground-mounted plants. The cooling systems collect the water from rainwater tanks and then recycle, filter and store it again. The company claims the technology can facilitate an annual increase in power generation of between 8% and 12%.
Policy, policy, policy: BloombergNEF’s path to hydrogen uptake
A hot energy topic with little coordinated analysis, green hydrogen has finally attracted the number crunchers of BloombergNEF.
Intersolar Europe canceled
Another big solar event has joined the list of those canceled because of Covid-19. The next edition of The Smarter E event will take place next year.
French-German alliance for vertical PV
French energy giant Total and German start-up Next2Sun have joined forces to develop vertical PV solutions in the French market. The oil group’s unit Total Quadran plans to use the solution in agrivoltaic projects.
A battery breakthrough for titanium cathodes
Scientists in Moscow have developed a titanium-based electrode material for metal-ion batteries they claim challenges the perceived wisdom of the element’s cathode potential and which could give researchers a ‘playground’ for the design of sustainable, cost-effective, titanium-based electrodes.
Solar emerging as best bet for West Africa’s future energy mix
The Economic Community of West African States should prioritize the development of solar PV to meet surging energy demand over the next 30 years, according to a newly published study.
