Solar

The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency said a project team testing new optical wireless energy receiver technology was able to transfer 800 W of power to a receiver 8.6 km away in a 30 second transmission. It claims is a distance and power record amongst optical power beaming demonstration results.

Kaduna Electric has signed an agreement to develop a 100 MW solar project with battery storage to strengthen electricity supply across Kaduna, Sokoto, Zamfara and Kebbi states in northern Nigeria.

Zesco has completed the 100 MW Chisamba solar farm in southern Zambia and has launched plans for a second 100 MW phase at the site, now home to sub-Saharan Africa’s largest grid-connected solar plant outside South Africa.

A research team based at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory says that solar could have the lowest levelized cost of energy (LCOE) of all energy sources in South Korea by the early to mid-2030s. 

The Fraunhofer Institute for Solar Energy Systems ISE (Fraunhofer ISE) has launched Diveo GmbH to plan and construct different kinds of agrivoltaic facilities without focusing on specific technologies.

Japan’s Sekisui Solar Film and the Netherlands’ TNO have signed a letter of intent to explore collaborations related to flexible perovskite solar PV. Talks will be initiated on a potential perovskite module factory in Brabant and the exchange of relevant information.

The Turkish authorities claim to have found evidence of dumping practices by Chinese PV junction boxes and frames manufacturers, which allegedly caused substantial damage to domestic producers.

Tenders for agrivoltaics and the commercial and industrial (C&I) market, simplified permitting procedures, and financial aid for solar installations are among a series of proposals the government of Luxembourg has adopted to accelerate the rollout of renewable energy technologies.

Scientists in the United States have designed a microwire solar cell that could reportedly enable the coupling of singlet fission with silicon. Key to their achievement was an interface that transfers the electrons and holes sequentially into silicon instead of both at once.

German automation specialist Acp systems developed an advanced robotics solution integrating image processing to handle a range of wafer sizes and tolerances within a vapor deposition process for a manufacturer of space solar cell technologies. The requirements included a compact design, precsion within 0.1 mm and automated wafer handling quality control.