Italy

The Italian authorities have allocated 243.3 MW of renewables capacity in the nation’s 14th procurement exercise for clean energy. Developers have offered a maximum discount ranging between 2% and 5.5% from the auction ceiling price of €0.07746 ($0.083)/kWh.

In an interview with pv magazine, Linda Kalcher, executive director at European think tank Strategic Perspectives, described the possible consequences of the recent EU elections on the continent’s energy landscape. “Investors and businesses need security and predictability to thrive,” she said. “If cleantech is not manufactured here, the jobs and investments go to the US and China and a deindustrialisation looms. This cannot be in the interest of any politician,”

Portuguese and Italian researchers have shown that the levelized cost of hydrogen (LCOH) is lower onshore and that PV-wind configurations reduce the LCOH up to 70%, while Lhyfe says it has started collaborating on a hydrogen storage project.

The European Union has drawn up new regulations to boost the domestic mining of raw materials and support production of renewable energy products and materials at home. Will it be enough to incentivize investment, or will Europe trail other major economies, such as the United States and China?

A research team including scientists from Italian module manufacturer 3Sun has tested new zirconium-doped indium oxide electrodes in commercial heterojunction solar modules. The new electrodes reportedly achieve the same performance as their counterparts based on indium tin oxide and paves the way for lower indium consumption in heterojunction products.

As the state-owned SECI launches a reverse auction to purchase 539,000 metric tonnes of green ammonia a year, Yara officially opened its 24 MW renewable hydrogen plant at Herøya, Norway.

The European Commission says it has started working on a new pilot mechanism, and Italy has agreed to expand collaboration with Austria and Germany, while also supporting cooperation between Italian companies and Finland’s Wärtsilä.

Researchers in Italy have investigated the potential of deploying energy communities based on east-west PV systems and have concluded that these projects, despite their lower energy yields compared to south-oriented installations, show higher shared energy values. They also warned, however, that the presence of a net metering scheme is crucial to make the east-west layout the preferred option.

Solertix claims to have reduced yield losses in cell-to-module scaling by utilizing ultranarrow interconnection of 19.5 μm. It also says the proposed interconnection technique may be used to achieve a 30% efficiency in area-matched 4T tandem designs featuring a perovskite module over a silicon cell.

Scientists from the Tokyo Institute of Technology (Tokyo Tech) and High Energy Accelerator Research Organization (KEK) have developed a highly oxygen-deficient perovskite for protonic ceramic fuel cells (PCFCs), while the European Commission has approved its fourth Important Project of Common European Interest (IPCEI).