News

Sydney’s Northern Beaches Council has seen its energy costs slashed by switching to renewables.

A US research team claims to have demonstrated that increasing the spacing of solar panels between rows improves PV system efficiency and economics by allowing airflow to cool down the modules. The method could improve a project’s LCOE by as much as 2.15% in certain climates.

The Vietnamese government has been working on a scheme to allow bilateral power purchase agreements (PPAs) since 2020. The start of the pilot scheme has been delayed and is now expected for the first quarter of 2023. The official program would launch in 2025.

A commercial and residential solar installation company with diversified interests as a developer of some of Australia’s biggest solar farms, Leeson Group is now taking a high-performance, Australian-engineered solar roof tile to the global market.

Singapore-based Sun Cable, which is seeking to develop the giant Australia-Asia PowerLink (AAPowerLink) consisting of up to 20 GW of solar and 42 GWh of energy storage on a 12,000-hectare site in the Northern Territory, is forming a consortium to advance sustainable smart energy grids in Asia.

The Cassiopeia solar project aims to use the sunlight collected by a space satellite for terrestrial energy needs. The electricity generated would be converted to radio frequency microwave radiation transmitted to an antenna on Earth. The initial LCOE would be $73.4 (USD 47.8)/MWh, according to a UK study.

A Swedish team has inaugurated a pilot facility to mass produce algae material that can potentially boost silicon solar module efficiency by 4% and thin film by 36%. The algae are added to the encapsulant in silicon-based modules or to the anti-reflective coating on the glass of thin film modules. The team estimates the resulting modules would be 3.9% cheaper.

Speakers at the CEC All-Energy conference in Melbourne have prioritised the built environment as ripe for embedding higher efficiency and sustainability standards.

Australian research that has seen crystalline silicon (c-Si) PV technology takes its place in the mainstream of the global energy industry has been recognised by picking up Finland’s top technology award. The €1 million (AUD 1.55 million) Millennium Technology Prize has been awarded to UNSW Scientia Professor Martin Green, in recognition for his work in developing passivated emitter rear contact (PERC) technology – the mainstay cell of the modern solar industry.

A team of researchers from the University of New South Wales (UNSW) has proposed a cost-effective way to recycle silicon solar panels. Their process consists of module deframing, laminate shredding and material concentration using electrostatic separation, reducing their original weight by 2% to 3%.