At the smarter E-Intersolar Europe trade show this week, awards have been given to the technologies driving the energy transition to a low carbon future. Prizes include the Intersolar Award, recognizing PV technology; the EES prize for storage innovation; and the smarter E awards – one of which was given to an off-grid agricultural project in Australia.

Developer has posted positive financial results for the second quarter running, following the company’s restructuring. Though its discontinued module manufacturing operations are not included in financial results for the first quarter, the company more than tripled net income on the previous three-month period.

A new study from University of California, Riverside, uses electric dipoles to accelerate electron in one direction, whilst completely stopping it in the other. The discovery, according to researchers, could lead to improvements in solar cell and other energy conversion technologies.

A team of scientists from the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST) has proposed a gold-based halide perovskite as a material for high efficiency solar cells, which it says could be both more stable and more environmentally friendly to produce than many existing perovskites which scientists are investigating to boost solar efficiency.

A team from Rice University and Los Alamos National Laboratory has been able to observe electronic properties of perovskites at the quantum scale, and made discoveries likely to impact the development of perovskite solar cells.

Singapore based developer Sunseap International has announced the start of construction on 168 MW project located in Ninh Thuan Province in the south of Vietnam. According to Sunseap, the project will be the largest built to date in the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) region.

At the African Development Bank’s annual meeting, held in Busan, Korea, the bank’s president Akinwumi Adesina announced that, alongside the Green Climate Fund and the Africa 50 investment fund, it plans to support the development of up to 10 GW of solar across the Sahel region.

British developer Elgin Energy has received approval from the Scottish government for a scheme it says will be Scotland’s largest solar plant. The site for the project is a former RAF airfield near the town of Elgin, in northern Scotland

Belgian research institute imec announced that it has developed a screen printing process for n-PERT solar cells. In collaboration with Chinese module manufacturer Jolywood, the institute announced that it has used the process to develop bifacial cells with average frontside efficiency of 21.9%.

Longi Solar has achieved an efficiency record of 20.66% for the front side of its 60-cell bifacial shingled module. The milestone was confirmed by the China General Certification Center