Germany

The German government has acted to remove a key hurdle to solar growth, in a deal hammered out as pressure for bold climate policies builds in the country’s streets and legislative chambers.

As of 11.30 CEST, the global pv magazine team in Berlin will down tools to attend the global climate strike at Brandenburger Tor.

Credibility comes not just from offering products that generate clean electricity, but also from the way in which those products are manufactured, says SMA Solar Technology CEO Jürgen Reinert. Here, transparency and sustainability are key. That’s why one of the world’s largest PV inverter producers has partnered with pv magazine’s UP sustainability initiative. In the following Q&A, Reinert lays out what SMA is doing to step UP its green game.

Tennet needs more than €4.75 billion to invest in cross-border grid infrastructure between Germany and the Netherlands, as rising volumes of solar and wind are complicating network operations, said Dutch Finance Minister Wopke Hoekstra in a recent letter to the Dutch parliament, adding that the government may need to privatize the state-owned transmission system operator or sell off a stake in it.

Germany must embrace renewables and energy storage at an unprecedented scale if it hopes to offset the void left behind by coal and nuclear phase-outs, a new study has said.

EuPD Research has calculated what needs to be done to replace the nuclear and coal generation to be phased out in Germany. Accelerated expansion of PV appears the best short-term option. However, storage capacity will need to increase 30-fold by 2040 so solar can become the main pillar of the country’s energy system.

The Munich-based chemical company has taken a substantial minority share in the British materials specialist to expand its silicon-based high-performance battery activity. The value of the transaction was not disclosed.

The Essent business of German utility RWE wants to widen its clean energy offer for Belgian clients. Last year Aralt achieved a €5 million turnover.

Scientists from the Helmholtz Zentrum Berlin research institute this morning presented a new world record efficiency for a tandem cell combining CIGS and perovskite technology at the EU PVSEC conference in Marseille. The development of an organic coating layer between the two semiconductors was key.

Germany’s Fraunhofer ISE is presenting a wide range of solutions for integrated PV – alongside farming, vehicles, the built environment and more, at the 2019 EU PVSEC show happening this week in Marseille.

Eastern Europe’s largest utility has decided to acquire a minority stake in Zolar – a German provider of digital solutions for rooftop PV – alongside BayWa r.e. Energy Ventures.

A 200 MW storage project is being developed by Hanwha Energy Corporation and Lumcloon Energy. The €300 million facility is intended to stabilize the grid to host more renewable energy capacity.

Major PV materials supplier, Heraeus Photovoltaics has collaborated with German company, Cell Engineering to develop metallisation pastes for its ‘LECO’ (Laser Enhanced Contact Optimization) technology that can increase multiple solar cell architectures conversion efficiencies by up to 0.15%.

Fraunhofer ISE in Germany was one of the first to experiment with combining solar and farming on the same land. Its early research found doing so increases the productivity of the land significantly — up to 60% or more in some cases.

Solar PV has seen a “meteoric rise” over the past decade, with more capacity installed than any other power source, according to a new report by BloombergNEF and the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP).