Technology

The Irish Solar Energy Association and AirPV have developed an online tool to calculate rooftop solar potential, enabling homeowners and businesses to estimate payback times, annual savings, and emission reductions.

The Mauritian government’s Central Electricity Board (CEB) is inviting consultancy firms to pitch their bids on conducting a feasibility study into developing a 30 MW floating solar PV farm at Tamarind Falls Reservoir in the archipelago’s southwest.

US-based Maxar Technologies used satellite imagery imagery with resolution of 31 cm to 15.5 cm to identify rooftop PV systems in southern Germany. The company claims its new approach was able to identify 97.8% of the solar arrays with high confidence.

APsystems has developed an AC-coupled residential battery charger, offering the ability to connect up to four batteries in parallel, for up to 20 kWh of storage capacity.

The first tender under the European Union’s new €40 million ($41.8 million) multilateral solar scheme – targeting 5 MW to 100 MW projects based in Finland and providing energy to Luxembourg – has been ‘oversubscribed’ with bids ‘significantly exceeding target volumes’, the European Commission’s Directorate-General for Energy recently announced.

PV module prices have fallen since the start of the pandemic in 2020, reaching a global two-year low in April 2023, according to the US Energy Information Administration (EIA). In the first two months of this year, average PV module prices in the United States stood at $0.36/W (DC), down 11% on a quarterly basis.

The scientists built the device by depositing multiple metal nanofilms on both sides using plasma-enhanced chemical vapor deposition. The cell achieved an open-circuit voltage of 684 mV, a short-circuit current density of 38.2 mA/cm2 and a fill factor of 80.8%.

Heineken España and Engie España have commissioned a 30 MW concentrated solar power (CSP) plant in Seville, Spain, with 68 MWh of storage capacity, marking the inauguration of Europe’s largest concentrated solar power plant.

A research team in Spain has developed a PV system layout for super-intensive olive groves. The scientists said the system must ensure high levels of transparency in order to avoid a negative impact on the olive yield.

South Korean researchers have developed a long-term solar irradiance prediction method based on a reinforcement learning algorithm. They claim that the new model is able to forecast solar radiation for more than a year using just two weeks of solar radiation learning.