Technology and R&D

The American conglomerate has issued a white paper on improving solar operations. How does this fit in with their corporate strategy going forward?

The largest solar trade show in the United States wrapped up this week. pv magazine takes a look at what went down, and the trends from the show floor.

Mimicking a compound eye of a fly, Stanford University scientists have packed tiny perovskite cells into a hexagon-shaped epoxy resin scaffold, improving the material’s durability when exposed to moisture, heat and mechanical stress in a breakthrough that may open the door to the awaited improvement in perovskite’s operational stability.

Can high levels of solar and wind coexist with nuclear generation on the grid? The answer is more complicated than you might think.

In this op-ed for pv magazine, kWh Analytics Software Engineer Paul Young previews his SPI presentation and explores the increasing importance of solar data standards and analytics.

There is a solid business case to combine PV plants with electrolyzers, as generation costs are low enough to competitively produce hydrogen as a fuel, says Bjørn Simonsen of NEL Hydrogen. He will speak at pv magazine’s Future PV event at SPI in Las Vegas.

In another breakthrough for the material so many solar advocates hope will replace traditional silicon in module production, a group of scientists in China and the United States have produced the first monocrystalline perovskite cell, which could accelerate its acceptance as a silicon replacement.

A collaborative project between the U.S. Department of Energy’s National Renewable Energy Laboratories and researchers from two Swiss centers has tested a range of multi junction cells in tandem configuration, and achieved efficiencies of up to 35.9%.

The gallium arsenide PV maker will collaborate with Audi on thin-film solar research, with plans to exhibit a PV-integrated Audi prototype vehicle by the end of this year.

The new 5 MW line in Silicon Valley will produce cells and modules under a new IBC technology from the company that makes the most powerful commercially available silicon solar products.