Technology

Enray Solutions has developed an autonomous, water-free cleaning robot for ground-mount solar installations that draws its power from an on-board PV panel and battery. The robot is designed to withstand the harsh environmental conditions of all kinds of terrain.

US-based energy tech company Enphase Energy appears to have overcome the adversity it faced in the mid-2010s, when it was grappling with competition from string inverters and slower growth in the residential segment. Now that rooftop solar is hot again, Enphase’s co-founder and chief product officer, Raghu Belur, sat down with Tristan Rayner to discuss the microinverter pioneer’s approach to quality in a time of rapid change and the growing utility of connected devices.

USA-headquartered CubicPV will supply, per annum, 1 GW of Direct Wafer silicon solar cells to Indian manufacturer Waaree Energies under a five-year contract. The cells will be supplied from its upcoming 2 GW factory in India.

The device is described as a heat engine with no moving parts that is able to produce power from a heat source of between 1,900 to 2,400 C. This concept is known as thermal energy grid storage (TEGS) and consists of a low-cost, grid-scale storage technology that uses thermophotovoltaic cells to convert heat to electricity above 2,000 C.

Ensuring pragmatic energy storage transformation is proportional to tweaking the current battery storage chemistry. Zinc battery technology is gaining traction, changing the prevailing energy storage dynamics.

BSES Yamuna Power Limited has deployed a digital solution pilot project that predicts the energy demand at consumption points like electric vehicle charging stations and energy generation capacity at solar rooftops. This will help the utility plan to store excess energy by considering the distribution congestion and commercial aspects. 

Norwegian renewable energy developer Statkraft has partnered Norway’s green investment company Aker Horizons to explore fully-integrated renewable power generation and green hydrogen production in India, targeting local steel and fertilizer industries.

Created by a Dutch group of companies and research institutions, the mobile solar system may also be combined with an electrolyzer for hydrogen generation. Two prototypes are currently being tested by a farmer and a research institute in the Netherlands.

Chinese inverter maker Growatt has launched Infinity 1500, a portable power station for off-grid applications.

US scientists have utilized a nanochannels device to cool down the operating temperature of a commercial PV module and have found that the proposed technique is able to improve power yield by up to 32.8%. Spray droplets are dispersed over the nanochannels device in order to eliminate the need for a continuous supply of a coolant.