Runergy is pushing the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) to cancel Trina Solar’s tunnel oxide passivated contact (TOPCon) patents, US9,722,104 and US10,230,009.

The proposed brackish water desalination system uses photovoltaic electrodialysis to enable direct-drive desalination at high production rates. It already operated for 6 months on real brackish groundwater and was reportedly able to use 94% of the extracted PV energy.

Researchers at the University of New South Wales claim to have identified new TOPCon contact degradation mechanisms that are significantly influenced by the combination of ions and aluminum-silver paste compositions. The primary degradation mechanism was a significant increase in series resistance.

The U.S. heating specialist said its Vilter VQ95 heat pump is an ideal solution for district heating and industrial processes. It has a heating capacity of 1 MW to 5 MW per skid and can reportedly provide a temperature of up to 95 C.

The price of silver has increased over 30% since the beginning of the year, with a particularly strong increase being registered in the last few months.

A group of researchers has proposed a new method for the sizing of PV systems that do not rely on an anti-dump system and operate without the possibility of injecting power into the grid. The novel approach requires an estimate of the annual hourly profile and the minimum power demanded, as well as the use of an irradiance meter and an electrical network analyzer.

UK-based Caldera has developed a new heat storage technology that can reportedly convert on-site generated solar power into on-demand heat, thus replacing conventional gas boilers. The system uses a composite of recycled aluminum and volcanic rocks to store heat at up to 500 C and produce steam.

New research from South Korea has shown that even a 10 μg/m3 increase in atmospheric particulate matter can considerably reduce solar power generation and impact revenue of PV system owners.

Tetracene is a polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbon that is commonly used in organic field-effect transistors (OFETs), organic light-emitting diodes (OLEDs), or as a sensitizer in chemoluminescence. Singlet fission solar cells can produce two electrons from one photon, making the cell more efficient.

Western New York Energy says it will install an industrial steam-generating heat pump at its ethanol plant in Medina, New York, with a maximum output temperature of 215 C and a coefficient of performance of 2.7.