Technology

The phovoltaic sunshade was deployed on the facade of a factory owned by Polish aluminum system provider Aliplast. The movement of the PV blinds is regulated by a controlling system linked to a weather station installed on the roof.

National Renewable Energy Laboratory researchers have studied which tech offers the lowest levelized cost of energy to provide the US Western Interconnection grid with electricity when wind and solar are not available. They assumed 85% renewables penetration and determined that geologic hydrogen storage and natural gas combined-cycle plants with carbon capture storage are the cheapest options for 120-hour discharge applications. 


The Indian manufacturer has introduced the HELOC̣ Pro series featuring mono-facial and bifacial modules based on M10 (182mm x 182mm) wafer size. 

Scientists have demonstrated a zinc-ion battery that overcomes many of the challenges for this technology. By working with a highly-concentrated salt solution as the electrolyte, the group was able to achieve stability over more than 2,000 cycles combined with a strong electric performance. The group says that its work opens up “a viable route to developing aqueous batteries for emerging electrochemical energy storage applications.”

Scientists in Bangladesh have evaluated how a 50 MW floating PV plant could be integrated with the 230 MW Karnafuli Hydroelectric Power Station, located at the Kaptai Dam on the Karnaphuli River. They found that the two energy sources can be perfectly optimized and that PV can compensate for the reservoir’s shortage of water storage during the winter season while hydropower can compensate for the poor yields of the floating array during the monsoon season.

Energy Vault secured $100 million in Series C funding for its EVx tower, which stores gravitational potential energy for grid dispatch.

The performance of the solar cell contacts can be improved with laser-assisted current treatment. The process does not damage the solar cells but only optimizes faulty semiconductor-metal contacts.

The comparison of two solar cladded roofs in Sydney, Australia, one bare beneath its panels and the other adorned with native grasses and plants, has found the panels on the green roof were, on average, 3.63% more efficient, producing an average daily output 13% greater than the conventional roof. The improvements are believed to stem from the lower temperatures on the green roof, thanks to its plants – which also provided a plethora of additional benefits.

The giga-scale factory, located in the Bengaluru city of Karnataka, will initially have the capacity to manufacture about 500 MW of electrolysis equipment per annum.

The battery was built with a new catholyte and a symmetry-breaking strategy, which consists of changing the symmetry of the redox-active organic molecules instead of using the common approach of attaching a hydrophilic functional group.