Vertical PV for breakwaters
The port of Valencia, Spain, is assessing the performance a vertical PV wall featuring 21 solar modules, with 8.6 kW of total capacity. A successful pilot project could pave the way for a larger vertical PV system on the port’s breakwaters.
Distributed solar as an antidote to illegal roof dwellings
Researchers in Taiwan are proposing a market-based incentive scheme to help property owners to move from using their roofs for illegal dwellings to rooftop solar power generation. They found these owners should be rewarded for solar power generation but also be compensated for the income loss due to the removal of illegal rentals.
Batteries overtake pumped hydro in Australia’s National Electricity Market
Grid-scale battery storage systems have surpassed the charging capacity of pumped hydro in Australia’s national grid, following the recent completion of two new battery projects, totaling 150 MW.
Five core challenges of the European solar photovoltaics research and innovation
In its latest monthly column for pv magazine, the European Technology and Innovation Platform for Photovoltaics (ETIP PV) presents its Strategic Research and Innovation Agenda (SRIA), published in collaboration with the European Energy Research Alliance for PV (EERA-PV).
Winaico releases 525 W TOPCon solar panels
Taiwanese manufacturer Winaico has developed new 525 W TOPCon solar panels with a power conversion efficiency of 22.1% and a temperature coefficient of -0.30% per degree Celsius.
Floating PV for waterparks
Prefabricated floating solar PV provider Sunlit Sea, based in Norway, has provided its floaters for a 60 kW floating array installed at a waterpark in Germany.
Control system to allow users take control of air-source heat pumps
Researchers in Korea have designed applied machine learning techniques to enable users to have more control of the timing of heating and cooling in air-source heat pumps. The system is based on backpropagation, which is an algorithm designed to test for errors working back from output nodes to input nodes.
Australia to source 5 MW of flexible demand in smart buildings project
Australia’s Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO) will lead a “smart buildings” pilot project that has the potential to create a new ecosystem of technologies and solutions to support flexible demand for energy.
US utility keeps power on with portable 1 MW/2 MWh battery
Green Mountain Power has used portable power to keep a commercial customer operational during six hours of scheduled maintenance. It says it now plans to bring resilience to five communities.
New mooring system for offshore, coastal floating PV arrays
The novel mooring solution consists of perimeter pontoons, barriers, clump weights, mooring lines and anchors. Its creators claim it is cheaper in materials and maintenance, as well as more wave-stable, compared to mooring systems using elastic cables.
