Western Europe

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.

China’s Sinopec has switched on the world’s largest solar-to-hydrogen project in Xinjiang, while India has unveiled a new plan to incentivize green hydrogen and electrolyzer production.

French oil and gas supermajor TotalEnergies has signed an agreement with Gentari Renewables, the clean energy arm of Malaysia’s state-owned oil company Petronas, to jointly develop a 100 MW solar farm in southwest Queensland.

Scientists led by the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology have designed panel-like photoreactors relying on a water-splitting photocatalyst that could produce hydrogen on rooftops or dedicated solar farms. They claim the photoreactors have high economic potential because of their ‘extremely’ low costs.

Scientists in Europe have put together a comprehensive guide to PV module degradation, examining literature and case studies on the topic as far back as the 1990s. Their paper details the primary stress factors faced by modules in the field, the most common modes of degradation and failure, and provides clear definitions relevant to reliability, quality and testing standards. Among their key findings is that a full understanding of how combinations of different stresses over varying timeframes is still missing from methods to estimate and improve system reliability.

Scientists in Belgium are exploring the potential of recycled silicon in solar modules at the end of their life cycle for reuse in low-cost, higher-energy-density storage technologies. They claim EV batteries using this silicon may allow faster recharging and travel longer distances on a single charge.

SolarEdge’s new bidirectional DC-coupled electric-vehicle (EV) charger enables vehicle-to-home and vehicle-to-grid applications and can seamlessly integrate with its home energy systems. It is scheduled for release in the second half of 2024.