U.S. solar manufacturers ink spacecraft deals
An Arizona manufacturer struck an research agreement with NASA, while a company in Colorado will supply thin-film solar to an unnamed private spacecraft company.
New research shows antimony chalcogenide solar cells are suitable for space use
Researchers in the U.S. tested the degradation of antimony chalcogenide solar cells exposed to proton radiation. The result indicated a robust tolerance and potential for use in space.
DOE removes “renewable” from National Renewable Energy Laboratory
The US Department of Energy (DoE) has renamed the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) in Colorado as the National Laboratory of the Rockies, a change it says aligns the institute’s mandate with the Trump administration’s applied energy priorities.
Utilities can manage data center demand with focused tariffs and rate design
Enverus report says actions can weed out speculators and shorten interconnection queues.
MIT spin-out 247Solar aims to decarbonize baseload power and industrial heat
The company opened a $25 million Series B funding round to support its concentrated solar power solution that stores and dispatches heat and electricity.
Cold storage units incorporate solar to help achieve a 55% reduction in power usage
TITAN Containers’ ArcticStore Horizon have a solar-grid power management system and cleaner refrigerants.
Two approaches to prevent queue-jumping by thermal generation
A study from Grid Strategies and ACORE finds evidence that priority transmission access offered by three grid operators has yielded generating portfolios “heavily weighted” to thermal resources. The study favors transmission planning followed by recruitment of projects that can use planned transmission capacity to enter the interconnection queue. A limited non-discriminatory “fast path” could meet near-term reliability needs.
Perovskite tandem solar panels selected for utility-scale installation pilot
Solar developer Plenitude will validate Swift Solar’s 28% efficiency perovskite-silicon tandem technology in a utility-scale project.
Community-based energy trading system for home solar-plus-storage
A research team led by Washington State University has developed a cloud-based system for trading and sharing energy from solar panels and batteries within a neighbourhood. The concept displayed potential energy cost savings of around 12% over a five-day test period.
Intermittent solar and wind complement each other for a more stable grid
A study finds combining wind and solar leverages their alternating peak periods, significantly boosting total generation capacity while providing a constant, predictable power curve critical for grid integration.
