Western Europe

Elon Musk has promised a fab near Berlin that will help create up to 10,000 new jobs. Tesla wants to build the facility near the city’s controversial new BER airport.

Researchers have made a finding they say could vastly simplify and reduce the production cost of perovskite solar cells. Working with mixed halide perovskites, the group found a disordered chemical composition can improve device efficiency.

A team of scientists led by the University of Glasgow has discovered a more efficient method of splitting water into hydrogen and oxygen using electricity which it says could almost double the amount of hydrogen produced per millivolt.

The Smart Energy Hub can operate in electrolysis mode to store renewable energy as hydrogen, or in fuel cell mode to produce electricity and heat from previously produced hydrogen or methane. Its developers are the French Alternative Energies and Atomic Energy Commission and start-up Sylfen.

A study from Sweden seeks to consider how PV could be sympathetically installed on historic buildings. The researchers propose a target-based approach for assessing panel visibility.

The building-sized trucks run on diesel and prompt logistical complications as large amounts of diesel must be shipped to remote mining sites. Attempts to decarbonize the mining sector will have to consider the heavy-duty vehicles.

The Norwegian solar manufacturer is planning to debut its Alpha Series heterojunction (HJT) modules at next week’s All-Energy event in Melbourne. Touted as the world’s highest power 60-cell solar panels, the new series promises over 20% more energy production than other modules with the same footprint and added value for home owners.

An Italian research team has developed a device that it says can easily be integrated into a PV cell, and can boost its efficiency by converting more light particles into a high energy state before they are absorbed by the cell. The scientists claim that their innovation could offer a green‐to‐blue photon upconversion yield as high as 15%.

Scientists led by the Technical University of Denmark have begun a project to design solar cells that can be produced in different colors with minimal effect on performance, making them suitable for building-integrated and other applications with aesthetic considerations.

The devices, developed by a European research team, are said to have twice the energy density of conventional aluminum devices. The scientists used a cathode made of anthraquinone, instead of one based on graphene, increasing energy density.