Startup Sunday: Al Gore vehicle arms Octopus with $600m
Also starting up: SolaBlock tapped for sustainability challenge prize, and BlueDot Photonics closes a $1 million funding round.
Perovskite-silicon tandems could rapidly scale solar
Halide perovskites combined with conventional silicon could help solar break the 26% efficiency barrier, disrupting the technology without disrupting business systems.
UK government launches competition to spur long-duration energy storage innovation
New tech which can store power for longer than four hours can secure funds toward demonstrator project costs.
Venture capital funding in solar, storage and energy intelligence sees a year-end surge
At least a dozen energy transition startups are getting their start during the pandemic holiday season.
Even if it is cheap enough, efficiency does matter
A British-German research team claims that organic PV technologies may become mature enough to compete with crystalline silicon and thin-film products not only in BIPV, but also in power generation in the electricity market. In order to get there, however, organic PV products will have to achieve higher efficiencies.
Oxford PV’s German perovskite solar module plant backed by Brandenburg state with $10 million
Oxford PV is currently building a manufacturing facility for its silicon perovskite tandem solar cells in Brandenburg an der Havel.
Clean energy funding roundup: batteries under solar panels, carbon capture acquisition, ultracaps
Yotta Energy just won seed funding to install batteries under solar modules — in an architecture analogous to microinverters and optimizers.
Norway’s Statkraft to buy UK’s Solarcentury in latest solar-hydropower blend
The Norwegian hydropower business wants to pay $152 milllion for the London-based clean energy developer which claims to have brought to life 1.2 GWp of project capacity in seven countries since 2013.
Swift Solar looks to reinvigorate and push the perovskite market forward
Born from an Oxford research group, the startup is looking to make its name by developing all-perovskite tandems, something no other company has done.
Nuclear ‘not an effective low carbon option’
Researchers in the UK have analyzed 25 years of electricity-production and carbon emissions data from 123 countries. Their findings show renewables are considerably more effective than nuclear in reducing carbon emissions from energy generation and that the two technologies tend to get in each other’s way when considered in a joint approach.
