India and Australia sign letter of intent on solar, ‘clean’ hydrogen
India and Australia have signed a letter of intent to cooperate on scaling up the manufacture and deployment of ultra-low-cost solar and “clean” hydrogen.
100MW of modules detained in the US under Hoshine WRO released
Shipping containers storing roughly 100MW of LONGi solar modules have been released, reports ROTH Capital Partners in an industry note, while Trina has had the vast majority of its detained product released, if not all of it entirely.
Q Cells offers 15 year warranty on ‘sleek’ new home battery, an Australian first
The latest home battery system from Q Cells, owned by South Korea’s Hanwha Solutions, will the “first to market” to provide a standard 15 year product warranty. The Q.HOME CORE will be available in Australia from March.
Panel recovery plants using European tech to open in Queensland ahead of national rollout
Queensland will soon be home to two solar recycling and materials recovery plants after Solar Recovery Corporation announced its partnership with La Mia Energia, an Italian consortium which has developed a panel recycling process it claims can recover up to 99% of raw materials. The partnering companies are planning to expand across Australia in the next two years.
Mobile solar pump for remote areas
Researchers at the Indian Institute of Technology Bhubaneswar have developed a solar power system that can be easily moved between farms to pump water for irrigation. The kit comprises solar panels and an inverter to power a surface-mounted pump.
Work begins on world’s largest PV system on a stadium roof
The stadium of German football club SC Freiburg will host a 2.4MW rooftop solar array that will be built with heterojunction modules provided by Swiss manufacturer Meyer Burger.
Rooftop solar price to keep rising this year
British analyst GlobalData has predicted residential and commercial rooftop panels will not return to a declining price trend until next year, with post-Covid logistics headaches the cause, rather than a polysilicon shortage.
TOPCon vs PERC – a battle between fast learning curves
TOPCon solar modules will gain more market share if their average efficiency, already higher than that of PERC panels, continues to improve, according to Stefan Glunz, PV research chief at Germany’s Fraunhofer Institute for Solar Energy Systems ISE. In an upcoming pv magazine webinar on the potential of TOPCon tech, Glunz will show how to reduce costs and increase efficiency.
Weekend read: Expansions in n-type
The past 12 months have been a turbulent time for PV manufacturing. Rapid and impressive developments in technology have been accompanied by price increases up and down the supply chain, and energy shortages weighed on production in the second half of the year. Chinese n-type module manufacturer Jolywood is now pressing ahead with ambitious expansion plans despite the disruption. pv magazine publisher Eckhart K. Gouras and editor Mark Hutchins recently caught up with Cathy Huang, European sales director at Jolywood, to discuss the company’s plans to bring n-type TOPCon technology into mainstream production.
Latent heat thermal storage with PV for nearly zero-energy buildings
Researchers in Italy are combining PV with latent heat thermal storage (LHTM) and other renewable energy sources to maximize clean energy consumption in buildings. The 47kW PV array and LHTM system work independently, but the scientists said that a heat pump could be used to link them.
