Women in Solar+ Europe highlights this week the insights shared by industry leaders during the panel “Impact Leadership in Solar & Storage: securing the energy transition through people, purpose and systems thinking,” organised by the leadership ecosystem Solar+ Leaders at Solar & Storage Live London. Bringing together voices from across the value chain, the discussion explored how leadership is evolving in response to growing system complexity, skills gaps, and the need for greater alignment across the industry.

In a new weekly update for pv magazine, Solcast, a DNV company, reports that April 2026 brought mixed solar irradiance conditions across South America, with above-average GHI along Colombia’s Pacific and Caribbean coasts and parts of southern Argentina, while eastern and northern temperate regions — including Buenos Aires to Bolivia — saw reduced irradiance due to persistent cloud cover and wetter-than-average conditions.

Escalating Middle East tensions and global energy supply risks are accelerating Europe’s shift toward solar and storage, particularly in commercial, industrial, and utility-scale segments where energy security, resilience, and price stability are becoming central investment drivers. At the same time, expanding manufacturing capacity in China and India is redirecting surplus solar and storage supply toward Europe, creating a highly competitive and increasingly selective market where long-term success depends on quality, reliability, ESG alignment, and strategic market positioning.

Over a 30-year asset life, corrosion can evolve into a structural, electrical, and fire safety issue. Corrosion drives up operations and maintenance (O&M) costs, reduces resilience to extreme events, and in some cases, can force premature decommissioning or complete structural replacement Intertek CEA’s Nicholas Hudson and Ankil Sanghvi advise on best practices.

For years, the battery energy storage (BESS) story has followed a familiar script: costs fall, deployment accelerates, economics improve. Even when cell costs rose and system prices briefly flattened during the 2021-22 lithium price spike, the narrative largely held. Paola Perez Peña, senior principal analyst at S&P Global Energy, examines why the latest jump in lithium prices has only had limited impacts on overall BESS costs so far.

National Bank of Egypt has acquired a 20% equity interest in Scatec ASA’s 1.1 GW Obelisk solar and battery energy storage system (BESS) project, reducing the Norwegian developer’s economic interest to 40% while leaving it in majority control through a layered ownership structure.

March 2026 saw a return to installation volumes not seen since 2012 as rooftop and large-scale deployment drove UK solar to a new milestone. Even greater monthly installation volumes are expected as further government support kicks in.

A new report by the International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA) finds that round‑the‑clock solar and wind paired with battery storage deliver power at lower cost than new fossil fuel generation in high‑quality resource regions.

Dutch-German quality assurance firm Sinovoltaics has released a free browser-based tool that generates project-specific reliability testing strategies for utility-scale solar projects, sorting recommended lab tests by priority and producing downloadable scope reports.

Researchers in Brazil found that retrofitting commercial PV panels into PVT systems can boost total efficiency to around 46–50%, but added thermal resistance limits heat extraction and slightly reduces electrical performance. Their experiments showed performance is capped by interface quality and system design, requiring improved heat extraction capacity.

A study from China shows rooftop PV systems on dairy barns can significantly reduce roof heat flux and improve indoor thermal conditions. Field measurements and simulations found up to a 2.3 C reduction in indoor temperature during peak afternoon heat stress periods.

The off-grid solar project, encompassing 31.85 MW of solar connected to 75.26 MWh of battery energy storage, will supply energy to over 90,000 people in eastern Angola.

Brazil’s Aneel has revoked 3.57 GW of photovoltaic project authorizations across four resolutions, mainly at the request of developers citing insufficient grid evacuation capacity and rising curtailment.

The Chinese manufacturer has launched an “Australia specific” variant of its Vertex S+ modules featuring a power output of 515 W and a maximum efficiency of 24.65%. Its lower-voltage design reportedly enables more flexible string sizing, allowing installers to optimize system layouts across a range of inverter configurations.

A scenario analysis by SolarPower Europe, modeled by Rystad Energy, finds that accelerating PV and battery storage deployment could save the European Union €223 billion ($260.7 billion) in gas imports between 2026 and 2030 and reduce wholesale electricity prices by 14% compared with 2025 levels.

The Netherlands Organization for Applied Scientific Research (TNO) is working with solar manufacturer MCPV and aviation giant Airbus to adapt terrestrial-proven silicon technology for space operations. It is envisaged the technology could serve as a lower-cost alternative to the gallium arsenide solar cells used in most space solar arrays today.

Latest report from the International Energy Agency’s (IEA) Photovoltaic Power Systems Programme (PVPS) finds measurable advancements in PV module recycling performance compared to its prior studies, including higher material recovery rates, improved process yields and higher output purity.

Harmony-F solar flooring can withstand uniformly distributed loads of at least 2 tons and has a hardness above 7 on the Mohs scale, indicating high resistance to wear and abrasion.

Fraunhofer Institute for Solar Energy Systems ISE has opened a dedicated lab in Freiburg, Germany, to scale perovskite-silicon tandem cell designs to large wafer formats using industry-standard processes.

A German research team has developed a nondestructive, on-site method to quantify water ingress in photovoltaic modules using near-infrared absorption (NIRA) spectroscopy calibrated with Karl–Fischer titration (KFT). The approach enables precise measurement of absolute moisture content in sealed modules without disassembly, improving inspection, failure analysis, and lifetime prediction.

Researchers in Austria found that fluorine and fluoropolymer content in PV backsheets has significantly decreased over the past three decades, driven by a shift from fluorine-rich multilayer structures to fluorine-free or coated alternatives. Despite this decline, fluoropolymer-containing backsheets remain important for end-of-life management due to environmental persistence concerns.

The new policy has already applied, and impacts billions in funding from the European Investment Bank on renewable projects including standalone and co-located storage.

An interlaboratory comparison across nine metrology institutes found generally good agreement in solar cell calibration under the World Photovoltaic Scale, but still revealed measurable differences in short-circuit current, voltage, and power due to varying methods and conditions.

Japan’s New Energy and Industrial Technology Development Organization (NEDO) has opened a supplementary call for proposals on mass production of next-generation single-junction perovskite solar cells, with submissions due by June 3.

A King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST) researcher whose lab has demonstrated up to 100% accuracy using a single hardware counter tells pv magazine that firmware-level detection of inverter attacks is technically viable – but today’s communication standards do not transmit the firmware‑integrity signal to operators.

Salt River Project and NextEra Energy Resources have signed a power purchase agreement for 3,000 MW of solar and 1,000 MW of battery storage to be built in Arizona through 2027.

The African Development Bank (AfDB) has launched a hydrogen funding call for African projects, while the European Commission has registered 265 supply opportunities under its Hydrogen Mechanism.

Researchers in Canada designed an air-source heat pump integrated with an air-based solar collector and radiant floor heating for cold climates, showing that the proposed system configuratuon could improve the coefficient of performance from 2–4 to 2–6 and reduce significantly annual energy consumption.

ESS Tech is complementing its iron flow storage offering, which is engeeneered for the 8–24 hour long-duration segment, with sodium-ion battery products aimed at short and medium-duration applications.

The system features AI-driven energy management, 10,000-cycle battery life, and scalable expansion up to 126 kWh.