Trina announces 23.3% efficient PERC cell produced on commercial tools
The Chinese manufacturer claims a record — since the device was manufactured on standard commercial production equipment.
How zinc-air battery capacity might reach a cost of $45/kWh
Zinc8 revealed some of the details of its long-term energy storage product, including its pricing structure and the science that makes its technology possible.
Morning brief: Oil billionaire pursuing perovskites, energy storage market to grow to $546 billion
Also in the morning brief: Arizona mandatory solar panel recycling bill, Sumitomo invests $46 million in long-term energy storage from Highview Power, and more.
Morning Brief: South Dakota’s largest project has a buyer, largest solar-plus-storage project in the Caribbean
Also in the brief: Safari Energy completes 60th commercial solar development, a 28 MW installation in New Jersey, Nautilus Solar acquires 3.5 MW Rhode Island project, solar aircraft designed to stay aloft for a year makes maiden flight.
Yotta Energy is putting batteries under solar modules — in the same spirit as microinverters and optimizers
Yotta has a potential solution for solar-plus-storage in the urban environment. Will the micro-storage startup become the next SolarEdge or Enphase? Or the next JLM energy? And whatever happened to SolPad?
The futurology of solar power: robots, hackers, 5G, cheaper modules, repowering, and really cheap electricity
Module efficiencies will continue to increase, while the price of an individual module will stay the same. Not only will this hardware produce more power, it’ll work far longer — with predictions of 30-year module warranties, roughly the projected lifetime of gas assets.
The inner workings of a lithium battery
An international group of scientists has developed a method to track the microscopic processes at work in lithium batteries. Employing a ‘virtual unrolling’ model developed for ancient manuscripts too sensitive to be opened, the group peeked inside the layers of a commercial battery to gain a better understanding of the processes at work and the degradation mechanisms affecting them.
Silicon heterojunction solar cell hits 23.5% efficiency with new hole-selective contact
Researchers from Switzerland’s École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne have used molybdenum oxide as the hole-selective contact in a heterojuction silicon cell. The scientists claim the compound can compete with traditional contacts despite a lower level of optimization.
Trump budget request boosts nuclear, clean coal – while solar, ARPA-E and energy R&D are cut
Presidential budget requests rarely make it through congress. Nevertheless, this budget reveals the administration’s radical goals. Bad news for ARPA-E , EPA and Energy-Star.
Recycling heat for a ‘385% efficient’ solar desalinator
MIT scientists have developed a solar desalinator which sends heat from the sun through a ten-stage process of evaporation and condensation. The group estimates that a $100 device incorporating their innovation could provide the daily drinking water needs of a family.
