Europe

The SeaVolt consortium says it will launch an offshore floating PV demonstrator off the Belgian port of Ostend. The main companies – Tractebel, DEME, Equans and Jan De Nul – say the anchored floating array will collect data for at least a year to scale up the tech.

Rystad Energy says that about €7 billion ($7.8 billion) of solar panels are now being stored in Europe, but European developers continued to buy solar modules from China throughout the first half of this year.

Clean energy investor Global Sustainable Energy Opportunities expects to gain access to additional revenue streams in Australia’s National Electricity Market after completing the retrofit of a battery energy storage system at an operating solar farm in South Australia.

Global demand for sodium-ion batteries is expected to grow to just under 70 GWh in 2033, from 10 GWh in 2025, at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 27%, according to UK-based market research company IDTechEx.

Italian manufacturer Barrel claims that solar kits packed in barrels are ideal for remote areas and conflict zones. Its standard packages consist of 6 kW solar modules, a 5.6 kW single-phase hybrid inverter, and 3.55 kWh of lithium battery energy storage capacity.

Japanese oil and gas giant Inpex has struck a deal to buy 50% of Italian utilities giant Enel Group’s Australian renewable energy platform, Enel Green Power Australia, handing it joint control of a solar farms portfolio that includes 254 MW of installed capacity and another 170 MW of renewables under construction.

Viridian offers five versions of its new residential inverters, with power outputs ranging from 1 kW to 3 kW and an efficiency ranging from 97.2% and 97.6%. The European efficiency is 96.4% to 97.2%.

Germany battery manufacturer VoltStorage has unveiled a containerised 50 kWh vanadium redox flow battery that is designed to optimise self-consumption in commercial and industrial PV systems.

The Amortisator app, initially developed for the German market, is now available on the Apple and Google Play stores. Primarily targeting customer advisors, the app can be accessed for a monthly fee of €9.99 ($10.93).

German renewables developer Solar Kapital has deployed membranes at three of its utility scale PV plants in Greece and claims the technology has delivered an up to 6.4% increase in yield and the payback time of the new solution is relatively short.