Solar Technology & PV R&D News

The South Australian shift toward renewable power has witnessed a new considerable step forward. The construction is starting at a major clean hydrogen project south of Adelaide. The facility is announced to feature the largest PEM electrolyzer in Australia.

Researchers have introduced a new metric for determination of the highest allowable cost for cell efficiency increase and levelized cost of electricity optimization. The scientists have called this new parameter ‘value of efficiency’.

A group of American scientists have selected 133 thousand prospective molecules for batt electrolyte from the list of 166bn with the help of newly created machine learning algorithm. The new approach is said to minimize the cost of computational examination without compromising the investigation accuracy.

Global generation of solar powered energy is actively expanding. According BloombergNEF, it is likely to increase from the current 2 percent of the global electricity production up to 22 percent by the middle of the century.

Ather Energy, an Indian electric scooter maker, has signed a memorandum of understanding with the government of the Indian state of Tamil Nadu to open a new production facility for lithium-ion batteries and electric vehicles.

Scientists from Singapore and Netherlands have found out how to create highly-efficient next-generation solar cells of perovskite materials.

The group of researchers at Purdue University has developed a new sandwich-structured perovskite, which combines inorganic and organic materials. The innovative material is expected to maximize the perovskite solar cells’ thermal stability with no need to include toxic lead in the structure.

China is going to complete a 200-tonne megawatt-scale satellite-based solar power project by 2035.

The government has been seen as slow to act on climate change, while Labor offered an ambitious carbon reduction policy.

A recent study shows that PV costs have declined faster than any other energy technology over the past two decades. The researcher behind the study said this would not have been possible without the “butterfly effect,” which is based on the idea that a small change in one part of a complex system can have a large impact elsewhere. The researcher also attributed the the rapidly declining cost of PV to Chinese manufacturing and strong US investor support.

The group of scientists headed by Professor Julien Bachmann controls the interlayer in solar cells to achieve high efficiency while using cost-efficient technologies and materials.

Swedish state-owned utility Vattenfall is to build its first floating solar farm in the Netherlands, a country increasingly seeing floating solar appear on its doorstep.

Japanese scientists have investigated the nature of defects present in the structure of hybrid organic-inorganic perovskites. The study outcome is likely to help make perovskite solar cells more stable and improve their efficiency.

Hot electrons can appear a key to maximizing energy collection from the sun by photovoltaic panels.

The amount of £5.2m has been raised during the latest fundraising round for Naked Energy’s solar thermal hybrid project. Most of the sum was invested by Earthworm, environmental fund management company, in conjunction with a co-investor – energy holding Taqa.