solar modules

As New South Wales rapidly expands its renewable energy pipeline, the Australian state’s Independent Planning Commission process is helping to align its energy needs with community and environmental concerns.

The Indian state of Gujarat’s latest 500 MW solar auction has secured a winning bid of INR 2.20 ($0.03)/kWh, which JMK Research has partly attributed to the project sites and growing expectations that mono PERC module prices will fall 10-15% by 2022.

Having picked up GBP 5.8 million ($8 million) in a series of investments, U.K.-based Power Roll is pushing ahead with pilot production of an innovative new thin film with which it can manufacture both solar modules and capacitors. In the future, the design could also bring the potential for solar generation and energy storage within a single lightweight device.

Solar and storage are developing at a relentless pace and pv magazine cannot cover all the interesting developments that are announced day by day. In this weekly Round-Up, we provide a quick review of all facts and deals that should not be off of our readers’ radar.

The US Energy Department set a goal of achieving 2 cents/kWh by 2030, and announced an initial $128 million in funding to support technology development.

Italy’s Saipem is planning what could be the world’s largest offshore PV plant — a 100 MW facility located off the coast of the Italian northern region of Emilia-Romagna. The project, whose approval process began two years ago, is expected to become operational by the end of 2025.

Scientists in the UK have had a closer look at the impacts of floating PV systems on the water. They found that their cooling effect on water mitigates blooms of toxic blue-green algae and increased water evaporation, which are both caused by global warming. They also warned, however, that colder water may result in a reduction of the duration of so-called thermal stratification. The right proportion between the surface occupied by the PV array and a water surface’s total area is key for addressing this issue.

The French developer will sell 70% of the power generated by the facility to Albanian power utility Operatori i Shpërndarjes së Energjisë Elektrike SH.A. (OSHEE) under a 15-year PPA and the remaining portion will be sold on the spot market.

A French-Lebanese research group has proposed a way to cool down PV modules by using air exhausted from heating, ventilation, and air conditioning (HVAC) systems. They showed that array performance improves when the cooling load rises.

Taiwanese researchers have added bathocuproine (BCP) molecules to three different kinds of solvents used in perovskite cells and have ascertained how this combination increases the carrier mobility and passivates the electron-poor defects. Furthermore, they utilized a polyelectrolyte (P3CT-Na) thin film as hole transporting material instead of commonly-used thin films based on PEDOT:PSS.