World

A recently published report from the International Energy Agency’s Photovoltaic Power Systems Programme on building integrated photovoltaics (BIPV) digitalisation found many industry professionals are unsure of a suitable method for estimating shading in BIPV projects.

A group of researchers from Helmholtz-Zentrum Berlin (HZB) has achieved a new world efficiency record for a silicon-perovskite tandem solar cell, with a certified efficiency of 32.5%.

As Australia’s hydrogen project pipeline doubles in 12 months, Iberdrola announces investment in a green hydrogen and green methanol production plant in Tasmania. Meanwhile, projects in Scandinavia target the shipping industry.

Growatt’s new APX HV cobalt-free lithium iron phosphate (LFP) battery has a storage capacity of 5 kWh and a nominal voltage of 650 V. It can be scaled up to six battery modules, for a maximum capacity of 30 kWh, or 60 kWh in parallel. It comes with a 10-year warranty.

US researchers have proposed the use of solar inverters in utility-scale solar assets to replace expensive voltage compensators, in order to provide voltage support at night. They said reactive power from PV inverters could be significantly cheaper and suggested the introduction of incentives to convince PV plant owners.

EODev will start delivering hydrogen generators by the end of 2024 to countries in the US, Europe, Australia and the Middle East, with a focus on regions with public incentive policies. German companies, meanwhile, have agreed to convert a gas pipeline network into a hydrogen pipeline network.

Shenzhen LiTime Technology’s new lithium iron phosphate battery system has a nominal voltage of 12.8 V and a capacity of 100 Ah. It comes with a five-year warranty and can purportedly operate for more than 4,000 cycles.

Chinese-Canadian PV manufacturing heavyweight Canadian Solar said it will begin mass production of 690 W TOPCon products in the first quarter of 2023. The modules will feature a cell efficiency of 25.0% and a bifaciality factor of more than 85%.

Researchers in South African have developed a new cleaning system for solar panels that uses a colour-sensing light-to-frequency converter to detect dirt. It can reportedly remove about 95% of the dust from a PV panel in less than a minute, at a lower cost than other systems.

A reduction of silver consumption in PV production is required on the way to terawatt scale. Given this, the time may have come for the commercialisation of new copper plating technologies – doing away with the need for silver in cell metallisation altogether. However, the history of plating technology is littered with cautionary tales.