Technology

Wood Mackenzie ranked NextPower as the world’s top PV tracker manufacturer in the first half of 2025, with companies headquartered in the United States, China and Spain occupying all top 10 positions.

This week Women in Solar+ Europe gives voice to Yolanda Hoyos, Chief Technical Officer at Spain’s Blacksalt. She says that inclusion, mentorship, and authentic leadership unlock talent, dismantle bias, and are critical to shaping the future of the energy transition. “When organizations respect individual circumstances, commitment and growth follow naturally,” she states.

Under the terms of the agreement, Aiko will be licensed to Maxeon’s back-contact solar cell and module patents outside the U.S., while both companies drop all ongoing legal actions.

In a new weekly update for pv magazine, Solcast, a DNV company, reports that January 2026 began with relatively mild, solar-favorable conditions across much of the eastern U.S., but ended with Winter Storm Fern, as a polar vortex disruption triggered widespread cold, clouds, and sharply reduced solar generation. A rare S4-level solar radiation storm was also recorded in mid-January, though it had no direct impact on photovoltaic performance or solar data quality.

The European Network of Transmission System Operators for Electricity published a report on instability detection technologies to help countries with high renewable energy shares maintain grid reliability. The study highlights key tools, research priorities, and the need for stakeholder collaboration to advance real-time monitoring and data-driven decision-making.

Researchers in the Netherlands developed a model to identify tolerable degradation rates of the top cell in perovskite-silicon tandem modules. Simulations showed that an increase in tandem module efficiency from 28.0% to 32.9% could raise the tolerable degradation rate by approximately 50%.

An international study finds that successful agrivoltaic projects require farm-specific, holistic co-design that integrates PV layout with agricultural mechanization from the earliest planning stages. Without proper alignment between machinery, crops, and PV systems, agrivoltaics risk major land loss, lower field efficiency, and higher operating costs, undermining farm profitability.

Beijing’s new rule lets standalone storage earn fixed-cost payments for availability, not energy delivered.

Copec, Luxmeter Energy, and Ventisqueros have commissioned a system at the Quintupeu salmon farming center in Hornopirén, a remote area of southern Chile. The installation features a 48 kW photovoltaic plant paired with a 109 kWh battery storage system, enabling the facility to reduce its reliance on diesel generators in this off-grid aquaculture operation.

The multi-project cluster includes the world’s largest single-site electrochemical energy storage facility: the 4 GWh Envision Jingyi Chagan Hada Energy Storage Power Station.