Technology and R&D

The federal government says new standards have been approved that will allow vehicle-to-grid charging in Australia – enabling electric vehicles to not only charge but also supply power back to homes or the electricity grid – by the end of the year.

Scientists in Egypt have created an anti-soiling coating for solar panels by mixing ethanol, deionized water, ammonium hydroxide and tetraethyl orthosilicate. They tested a coated panel outdoors for ten months and found that the panel showed a 64.7% higher current compared to reference modules without coating.

A team from the University of New South Wales School of Photovoltaic and Renewable Energy Engineering has reinvented the design of screen-printed contacts to reduce costs and silver consumption, without sacrificing the efficiency of tunnel oxide passivated contact solar cells.

The founder of Perth-based wave energy technology business, WaveX has said its under-development wave power generator can be combined with solar and decrease costs of reaching a given level of dispatchability, a claim backed by a Blue Economy report.

GoodWe has developed a residential solar carport that features its Polaris building-integrated PV (BIPV) panels. The carport, which is available in 4.8 kW and 8.0 kW variants, is designed to host one or two vehicles, respectively.

The Australian arm of France-headquartered utility, EDF Renewables Australia, has partnered with Melbourne’s Swinburne University of Technology to launch a program driving innovation for the energy transition.

Perth-headquartered Australian Vanadium LImited’s subsidiary VSUN Energy has moved a vanadium flow battery project to a design phase with the aim to develop a home-grown modular, scalable, turnkey, utility-scale battery energy storage system.

Researchers at the Australian National University are part of the international team that has built an all-perovskite tandem solar cell based on a wide-bandgap top perovskite cell with a 20.5% efficiency. The 1 cm2 scale tandem device achieved the highest efficiency yet reported for all-perovskite solar cells of this size.

Researchers have analysed how wind speed and direction affect the cooling of a rooftop PV plant with 10,806 panels. They said that winds from behind were less effective due to the roof slope and the minimal gap between the panels and the roof, but wind from other directions could contribute to a cooling effect of up to 7 C.

Chinese solar cell and module maker Aiko Solar has partnered with the Australian Centre for Advanced Photovoltaics on a $6 million initiative aiming to achieve 30% efficiency with interdigitated back contact silicon solar cells.