Technology

The Landshut University of Applied Sciences and German start-up Voltstorage will initially develop a residential battery with a capacity of 8 kWh. At a later stage, they want to fabricate a 50 kWh device for applications in the commercial segment.

An international research team has developed a PV cell with all-inorganic cesium-lead iodide (CsPbI3) perovskite. The scientists added phenyl-C61-butyric acid methyl ester (PCBM), one of the best electron acceptors in organic PV cells, into the CsPbI3 quantum dot layer.

German manufacturer Autarq is selling its solar tiles at a price ranging from €25 to €30 per piece. It claims a PV system built with these products can cover around 70% of household needs.

Scientists in China and the United States investigated the inner workings of aluminum-ion batteries. With new insights into mechanisms at work within the battery during cycling, the group was able to demonstrate a battery capable of ultrafast charging, with the highest capacity so far reported for an aluminum battery.

Spanish water-treatment specialist Emalsa has teamed up with Instituto Tecnologico de Canarias ITC and Universidad Europea de Canarias to study the feasibility of a 1.53 MW floating solar plant that could potentially power the Piedra Santa desalination plant in Gran Canaria.

Scientists in the Netherlands conducted a feasibility study for adding floating solar to a planned 752 MW offshore wind installation in the North Sea. The study finds that the two could realistically share a single connection to an onshore grid, with minimal curtailment as well as technical and economic benefits for both technologies.

The Austrian motorway company Asfinag is planning to power, with solar-plus-storage, all its maintenance facilities. These installations are planned to power the stations at night and in the event of a grid failure.

The single-junction cell has a conversion efficiency of only 1.4%, but its creators claim it may easily reach between 4 and 5%, when properly optimized. The device also showed a remarkable open-circuit voltage of 360 mV, which the scientists described as the highest VOC value ever reached for SnS‐based heterojunction solar cells.

Multiple U.S. states require electric utilities to share their power grid data with solar developers. The resulting tools are like treasure maps for solar developers.

Scottish start-up Gravitricity has begun construction of a 250 kW gravity-based energy storage project at Port of Leith. A 15m-high rig uses renewable energy to raise a mass in a 150-1,500m shaft and discharges the electricity thus ‘stored’ by releasing the mass to rotate an electric generator.