Small solar is getting bigger, cheaper and more efficient
LBNL’s annual Tracking the Sun report, comparing 2017 to 2018, saw module efficiency rise almost 10%, system prices decrease 5-7%, median system size increases, and significant variability in all of those data points across the 1.6 million systems surveyed.
The Open PV Project goes offline
The U.S. Department of Energy has shut down the site for its Open PV Project, which supplied cost and installation data. Is this the winding down of a project whose time had come, or part of a more disturbing trend?
The blackest black for more efficient solar cells
MIT scientists claim to have created a material 10 times more black than anything witnessed to date. It is said to be able to absorb more than 99.96% of incoming light and reflect 10 times less light than other superblack materials. The invention may be interesting for the development of black silicon PV technology and carbon nanotube-based solar cells.
San Diego demands clean community energy
The San Diego City Council has voted 7-2 to bring community choice aggregation to the city, becoming the 26th local government in California known to pv magazine to do so.
Soltec achieves 16.2% Bifacial Gain, Ohio State makes a potassium battery breakthrough: pvMB 9/18/19
Happy Wednesday, folks and welcome to the pvMB. Today we’ll be checking out 7 Michigan school districts moving to electric bus fleets, Extensible Energy’s virtual battery, net metering protests in The Big Easy and more.
Is the Trump Administration blocking the science on a renewable-powered future?
A study on reaching high levels of renewable energy has been removed from the NOAA website, and an energy writer says that the release of another study has been blocked.
MISO seeks to make solar a dispatchable, intermittent resource
MISO is seeking input as it transitions solar power to being more highly integrated into its energy forecast modeling. This is happening as the volume of solar is booming, and follows on the grid operator’s success with wind power.
New technologies, new challenges: An interview with Jenya Meydbray of PVEL
In this interview, pv magazine talks with PV Evolution Labs CEO Jenya Meydbray about the new designs including heterojunction that will allow the solar industry to reach higher efficiencies, and the challenges entailed therein.
In lab secrets, Tesla is talking about 20-year lithium ion batteries
Researchers have found that over three years of testing lithium ion NMC532 graphite battery cells have the potential to stay structurally sound long enough for cars to reach greater than 1 million miles, and grid connected energy storage to last more than 20 years under daily use.
How the cash flows when we electrify buses, agriculture and more
The Brattle Group has developed a Total Value Test to help determine a more accurate economic valuation of energy efficiency programs historically, including case studies of city bus electrification, indoor agriculture and water heating.
