This week, Women in Solar Europe (WiSEu) gives voice to Elodie Colliard, director of Switzerland’s Green Giraffe. She explained she encountered her fair share of gender-based assumptions and biases. “While the disparities remain obvious and women are still a minority, I take comfort in seeing more of us join the industry, bringing our skills and perspectives to the table,” she states.

In a new weekly update for pv magazine, Solcast, a DNV company, says much of East Asia enjoyed a sunnier-than-usual start to the year due to a persistent Siberian high and delayed La Niña onset. However, a fully developed La Niña brought heavy cloud cover and flooding to other parts of the region, especially Indonesia.

As the global transition toward sustainable energy intensifies, building-integrated photovoltaics (BIPV) has emerged as a critical innovation in merging renewable energy with architectural design. The recently published guidebook “Building-Integrated Photovoltaics: A Technical Guidebook,” edited by IEA PVPS Task 15 experts Nuria Martín Chivelet, Costa Kapsis, and Francesco Frontini, offers a comprehensive resource for architects, engineers, and urban planners looking to integrate BIPV into the built environment. This article explores the book’s key insights, including applications, challenges, and future pathways.

This week, Women in Solar Europe (WiSEu) gives voice to Josef Kastner, the CEO of Austria-based Nexun. He says professional decisions must be based on ability, not gender. “Societal expectations influence leadership styles, but fairness is non-negotiable. Everyone deserves the same rights and opportunities,” he states.

In a new weekly update for pv magazine, Solcast, a DNV company, analyses a new AI-driven weather model from the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts (ECMWF). 

A Roth Capital Partners survey of residential solar and energy storage installers has revealed an apparent market shift away from the leading home battery provider in some parts of the United States.

Singapore-based solar manufacturer Gstar Solar has received the first of 120 monocrystalline growth furnaces to be delivered to its new 3 GW wafer manufacturing facility in Indonesia.

US solar module prices rose in December 2024 for the first time since last summer, driven by tariff adjustments and patent litigation uncertainty, according to Anza. While prices have since stabilized, module type, cell origin, and geopolitical factors continue to shape the market.

A study estimating the economic viability of rooftop solar in Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania forecasts the levelized cost of electricity (LCOE) for PV systems in the Baltic States at between €0.08 ($0.087) and €0.09/kWh by 2050 at a 6% discount rate.

The Chinese group announced the new TCL SunPower Global unit will operate mostly in Europe, the Middle East and Africa, selling SunPower-branded solar energy solutions alongside TCL’s own solar products.

Akasaka Heating & Cooling Supply says it will use green hydrogen produced at an unspecified location in Japan to produce heat and electricity for its Akasaka 5-chome district heating system in central Tokyo.

Recent data show Israel added 900 MW of solar PV capacity in 2024. The majority of the newly-added capacity stems from projects operating under merchant power purchase agreements (PPAs).

Mibet has released new floaters for PV systems deployed in deep water. The G4M system, already installed in Indonesia on a body of water with a depth of 60 meters, allows the solar panels to be tilted at 5 degrees to 15 degrees.

France’s new feed-in tariffs (FITs) for February to June 2025 range from €0.0839 ($0.0907)/kWh to €0.1295/kWh, depending on system size.

The provincial board of Ilcos Norte in the Philippines has approved the development of a 300 MW solar farm. Manila-headquartered Opus Solar Enery Corp. will develop the project.

Austa has launched an all-in-one residential storage system with a three-phase inverter offering output from 5,000 W to 15,000 W and storage capacities ranging from 10 kWh to 30 kWh.

Researchers in Switzerland have investigated the impact behaviour of ice balls on an aluminium Hopkinson bar at different velocities, diameter and temperature.

Researchers in Sweden have developed a method to use LiDAR data to enable more precise tilt and azimuth modeling of solar PV and solar thermal capacity at a regional or substation level. The model could enable aggregators and grid operators to improve grid planning.

Renolit Ondex says its PVC-based mounting system is lighter and more impact-resistant than metal or fiber cement supports, while also helping to lower PV module temperatures.

A cancelled factory led to the sale. The solar cells produced by the equipment are “game-changing tech at liquidation values,” said the seller.

Efforts to establish solar manufacturing in the United States, on the back of generous Inflation Reduction Act subsidies, have had mixed results. While module assembly facilities appeared swiftly, cell production capacity trails far behind and current policy uncertainty is leaving more questions than answers for solar manufacturers of all sizes.

Amid a record amount of new solar capacity added in China in 2024, the share held by small-scale, “distributed” arrays fell to 38%, from 58% in 2022. Grid constraints, policy changes, and pricing adjustments have impacted home and business solar arrays, as Vincent Shaw reports, from Shanghai.

Scientists in the United States have created a testing platform for energy harvesting in solar-plus-storage systems under extreme temperatures ranging from -180 C to 300 C.

Researchers in Australia have have fabricated an aluminum contact-based TOPCon solar cell based that achieved a power conversion efficiency of 22.92%. The device was built with an aluminum contact manufacturing process that reportedly does not compromise the surface passivation quality of underlying silicon oxide layers.

Clean Energy Associates (CEA) is receiving more calls from solar developers concerned about warehouse panel damage. CEA senior engineering manager Claire Kearns-McCoy explains how improper handling, stacking, and storage conditions can lead to long-term issues.

A month after India introduced an energy storage mandate for renewable energy plants and China scrapped its own, Mexico has stepped forward with an ambitious 30% capacity requirement, alongside plans to add a further 574 MW of batteries by 2028.

Trafigura says it has scrapped plans for a $471.2 million green hydrogen plant in Australia after a feasibility study, while Aurora Energy Research says Germany, Spain, Sweden, and Great Britain could drive over 50% of renewable energy demand by 2035, requiring €100 billion in investment.

Developers from the renewable energy and data center markets are working to find common ground to meet surging energy demand fueled by the artificial intelligence boom.

Allegro Energy has introduced Australia’s first domestically produced microemulsion flow battery for long-duration energy storage (LDES). The company will pilot the technology with Origin Energy at the Eraring power station.

Scientists in China designed a suplhuer-based redox flow battery with a peak power density of 95.7 mW cm2 and an average energy efficiency of 76.5% at 30 mA cm2 within 50 cycles.