Technology and R&D

According to a new study by Finland’s LUT University, solar PV consumes between 2% and 15% of the water that coal and nuclear power plants use to produce just 1 MWh of output; for wind, this percentage ranges from 0.1% to 14%. Under the researchers’ best policy scenario, water consumption could be reduced by 75.1% by 2030, compared to 2015 levels.

Hydrogen can be produced from various sources including biomass, renewables and LNG and possesses high energy density and long-time storage—said the minister, who recently took the test drive of a hydrogen fuel cell based car manufactured by Toyota Kirloskar.

The combination of pumped hydro with other storage technologies can increase renewables penetration, improve operational safety and reduce maintenance costs at large-scale hydropower plants, according to new research. The study also focuses on techniques to determine the optimal size of renewables-based pumped hydro storage systems. Costs for hybrid solar-pumped hydro projects currently range from $0.098/kWh to $1.36/kWh.

The pilot plants—installed at a temple and a school—work on a membrane-based electrodialysis technology to provide clean drinking water.

While it has often been referred to as “the future of PV” in recent years, discussions surrounding bifacial technology are now very much in the present. Modules are beginning to roll off production lines in significant numbers, and industry players are boasting of gigawatts of bifacial projects that are already installed or in the late stages of development. But it’s still early days for the technology, and there are questions to answer for it to achieve its full potential. pv magazine investigates the modeling and optimization of bifacial PV’s performance.

We are pleased to present the next batch of energy yield results from the outdoor test field in Xi’an, China. The September 2019 results are presented below, plus analysis from George Touloupas, director of tech and quality at CEA.

Spanish researchers have discovered a material said to offer radiative cooling and self-cleaning of devices which undergo critical heating during operation, such as PV panels. The thermal emitter enabled the scientists to lower the daytime temperature of silicon wafers by 14 degrees Celsius.

The Smart Energy Hub can operate in electrolysis mode to store renewable energy as hydrogen, or in fuel cell mode to produce electricity and heat from previously produced hydrogen or methane. Its developers are the French Alternative Energies and Atomic Energy Commission and start-up Sylfen.

Amtronics’ Tech City facility—constructed to a 75,000 sq.ft footprint—will use US firm Quantum Materials Corp’s technology to manufacture quantum dots and thin-film quantum dot solar cells.