North America

Australian concentrated solar thermal company Vast Solar has struck a deal with the world’s largest oil drilling contractor, Nabors Industries, announcing it will go public via the partnership and expects to list on the New York Stock Exchange midyear.

When US President Joe Biden signed the $500 billion (USD 369 billion) Inflation Reduction Act into law in August 2022, it was lauded as the most significant policy the world has yet seen to combat climate change and drive the transition to renewable energies. However, some international critics and competitors claim the landmark bill thwarts their slow-burning ambitions to foster green manufacturing at home. As governments scramble to respond to the scale of the IRA, Australia is one country realising it may have already been left behind.

Ionblox says it will use $32 million of series B funding to support the buildout of a novel silicon anode electric vehicle battery.

United States-based solar tracker provider Array Technologies is planning to set up manufacturing operations in Australia after being awarded a contract to supply trackers for a 102 MW solar farm being developed in Victoria’s northeast.

Enphase’s new bidirectional EV charger enables vehicle-to-home and vehicle-to-grid applications, and can be integrated with its home energy systems.

Form Energy will install two 10 MW / 1,000 MWh batteries on the sites of Xcel Energy’s former coal-fired plants.

Researchers from the University of Adelaide, along with international partners, have successfully used seawater with no pre-treatment to produce green hydrogen. The team did this by introducing an acid layer over the catalysts in situ. “We have split natural seawater into oxygen and hydrogen with nearly 100% efficiency… using a non-precious and cheap catalyst in a commercial electrolyser,” University of Adelaide’s Professor Shizhang Qiao said.

The drivers for PV supply-chain traceability could rub against a solar industry enjoying a true seller’s market, with demand outstripping supply. However, supply-chain auditing services are gaining support in increasingly regulated environments. pv magazine’s Tristan Rayner has spoken to a number of auditing experts about how they shine a light on often-opaque operations.

US-based Salgenx has developed a scalable redox flow battery with two separate tanks of electrolytes, one of which is saltwater. Unlike other flow batteries, the new device is membrane-free, promising big gains at the levelised cost of storage level.

Canadian scientists have developed a new way to measure the energy yield of bifacial PV systems. They said they considered the spectral albedo of ground cover like snow and sand to predict energy gains of up to 2%, in comparison with the International Electrotechnical Commission (IEC) standard.