Technology and R&D

Kunwer Sachdev, the founder of Su-kam brand inverters in India, has converted his farmhouse in Gurugram into an R&D and manufacturing facility for new-age solar and lithium battery storage products under his new venture Su-vastika Systems. He speaks to pv magazine about their offerings including mobile energy storage, lithium battery tester, solar inverters, and more.  

Mauritian researchers have developed a solar tracker prototype that increases current by around 37%. The device uses a simplified and mechanical tracking system.

Badenova has installed 912 glass-glass PV modules along a cycling path in the city of Freiburg, Germany, as part of a new pilot project.

Dutch scientists have reported higher degradation risk for n-type TOPCon cells with EVA encapsulant due to potential moisture degradation. Front-side metallization makes n-type cells more vulnerable than p-type cells, according to damp heat tests.

Researchers from Massey University in New Zealand have developed a robotic lawn mower with three 50 W solar panels and a 20 Ah lithium-iron-phosphate (LiFePO4) battery. Two of the PV panels can be retracted and stacked inside the robot. They slide out when it needs to recharge its batteries.

India’s Vivasvan Solar has designed a foldable solar structure mounted on a trolley. The system employs mechanisms to prevent damage to the panels during transit and is especially useful for agricultural farms.  

A Jordanian research team has designed a cleaning technique for solar modules that uses static electricity to remove dust from panel surfaces. The system features an electrostatic ionizer that reduces attraction between dust particles and their accumulation on modules, improving their energy yield.

Researchers in India have combined PV generation with heat produced by an earth-to-air heat exchanger to provide buildings with space heating and cooling. They say the proposed system could result in an annual energy gain of 8116.7 kWh.

Sarcos has designed a robotic PV construction solution that delivers, detects, lifts, and places PV modules in large-scale solar plants. It has recently field tested and validated the prototype solution in a pilot project funded by the US Department of Energy.

The US National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) and First Solar have used cracked film lithography (CFL) to build a bifacial cadmium telluride solar cell with a power density of 20.3 mW cm−2. They claim the cell has a higher bifacial power density than any polycrystalline absorber currently manufactured at scale.