South Korea

Selected projects will be awarded a fixed rate under a 20-year contract under the country’s renewable energy certificate (REC) scheme and will sell electricity to local power distributors.

The Korean manufacturer launched a new bifacial module based on M10 wafers and is planning to produce bigger modules based on M12 wafers starting from the third quarter.

The inverter and battery manufacturer says its new Sella 2 factory will produce cells for its residential solar-plus-battery products as well as for other applications.

Hanwha Q Cells plans to build a 1.4 GW solar panel factory at an undisclosed location in the United States. It has also announced plans to expand its cell capacity to 5.4 GW in South Korea. CEO Justin Lee spoke to reporters at the Smarter E event about the company’s plans and current supply chain issues.

The Korean manufacturer and the German research centre were able to improve the performance of their jointly developed tandem solar cell by almost one percentage point.

Scientists in South Korea developed a porous carbon material that, when applied as a coating to the separator film in a lithium-sulfur battery, was shown to reduce an unwanted side effect and improve the battery’s performance and reliability. The coating is based on methylene blue, a type of salt commonly used in textile dying.

Scientists in Korea have developed an efficient synthesis route to produce a novel co-doped anode material for rechargeable seawater batteries. They developed a one-step plasma-in-liquid process to synthesise nitrogen and sulfur co-doped carbon-based anode material, which displayed great potential for seawater batteries.

Researchers at the Australian National University say they have set a perovskite solar cell efficiency record at 22.6%. This efficiency, however, appears to be lower than that achieved in January by a group of Swiss and Korean researchers who used quantum dots to achieve an efficiency of 25.7% in an area of 0.08cm2 and 23.3% in 1cm2.

While there are still many uncertainties as to the way in which hydrogen trade might evolve and change economic ties and political dynamics between countries, experts agree that green hydrogen can bring winds of change to the global energy arena. According to the International Renewable Energy Agency, significant geoeconomic and geopolitical shifts are just around the corner.

LG Chem’s energy storage and battery division’s US$10.7 billion (AU$14.8 billion) initial public offering received a staggering response from institutional investors, Reuters has reported.