UNSW

University of New South Wales academic Aihua Wang is the first female recipient of the United Kingdom’s Queen Elizabeth Prize (QEPrize) for Engineering, after sharing the 2023 award with Andrew Blakers, Martin Green, and her husband Jianhua Zhao for their work developing the passivated emitter rear contact (PERC) solar cell. pv magazine caught up with her to ask about the achievement.

Researchers from UNSW say they have found a commercially viable pathway to the decentralised production of green, renewable ammonia. An alternative to the traditional Haber-Bosch method, the researchers used nanosecond pulsed plasma bubbles coupled with electrocatalysis.

Researchers at UNSW have modelled how shifts in Australia’s future weather patterns due to climate change will impact the nation’s solar resource, including its dependability. They found solar reliability may increase parts of Eastern Australia by 2099, but the outlook worsened in Western and Northern Australia.

Australia’s vast distances make the supply of electricity via traditional grids expensive and even dangerous. With demand growing for agricultural goods produced with low-carbon emissions, solar and energy storage is being embraced even by skeptical farmers.

Four solar pioneers, including the Australian scientists Martin Green and Andrew Blakers, have been awarded the world’s most prestigious engineering prize for their groundbreaking research into solar cell technology.

UNSW researchers have found a new approach to photochemical upconversion, which involves converting low light particles into higher-energy light particles. The discovery has potential to unlock innovations in renewable energy, particularly solar, with the team flagging it could raise the efficiency limit of solar devices from 33.7% to 40% or beyond.

Researchers in Australia have provided a series of recommendations to set up regulatory frameworks for PV module recycling and reuse. They said that, as a rule of thumb, landfill bans, tracking of the panels’ serial numbers, and a clear definition of ownership should always be included in the legislation for end-of-life solar products.

University of New South Wales (UNSW) researchers have looked at energy losses in South Australia and have identified average curtailment of 1.5% for distributed PV sites and 0.2% for distributed PV coupled with batteries, but some locations experience generation losses of up to 25%.

Solar pre-cooling consists of using residential PV systems to run air conditioners to pre-cool residential and commercial buildings. It offers benefits in terms of mitigating low minimum demand in electricity networks, flattening the grid’s net demand profile, and reducing electricity bills.

The research group led by Professor Martin Green has published Version 62 of the solar cell efficiency tables. There are 21 new results reported in the new version, a record number for the Tables.