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Platts has launched an “interactive explorer” tool that shows the capture price received by wind and solar power assets, using hourly production and monthly average price data for Spain, Germany, Italy, France, and the United Kingdom.

Israel is considering two new tariff rates for selling excess electricity from home solar installations back to the grid. The first will offer a higher rate for the first five years, before dropping beneath the current rate, while the second will link the tariff to inflation. A consultation is open until April 4.

Greece’s latest auction has awarded subsidies to 188.9 MW of standalone, front-of-the-meter, utility-scale battery energy storage. The auction was the third and final edition of a battery storage subsidy program launched in 2023, with the country now turning its focus towards a new 4.7 GW unsibsidized BESS scheme.

Somalia has changed the deadline for a tender seeking a developer for a 55 MW solar plant with a 160 MWh battery energy storage system (BESS) at the Jazeera power plant in Mogadishu. The new deadline is May 5.

Developer Shannon LNG has obtained permission from the Irish planning authorities for a 600 MW regasification unit and a 120 MW battery energy storage system (BESS) in County Kerry. It is unclear when the plant will be built. Renewable energy advocates and opposition politicians are calling on the state to overturn the permit, citing Shannon LNG’s separate plans to construct a controversial LNG terminal near the gas plant.

The procurement exercise has attracted 67 battery energy storage companies but only six have emerged as winners. The average bid stood at CNY 0.473/Wh ($65/kWh).

The Canadian government has announced further investment in the country’s heat pump subsidy scheme, which offers homeowners an up to CAD 20,000 ($21,695) payment towards heat pump installations, aimed at the province of Manitoba.

Researchers at Thailand’s Vidyasirimedhi Institute of Science and Technology demonstrated a novel hydrogel that has high cooling effect on silicon PV panels. The lightweight technology purportedly enables a temperature drop of 23 C, from 70 to 47 C, and a relative 12.3% power conversion efficiency increase.

Researchers in Canada have compared strawberry growth under uniform illumination from semi-transparent thin-film cadmium telluride panels and non-uniform illumination from semi-transparent crystalline silicon modules. Their analysis considered metrics such as fresh weight, height, leaf count, chlorophyll content, soil temperature and humidity.

An international research team has conceived a dual-component controller for three-phase inverters that can reportedly achieve faster settling times, reduced overshoot and more stable current tracking compared to conventional controllers.