Western Europe

The German company’s decision to cede market share to Chinese companies producing the material for solar panels, in order to focus on semiconductor-ready, electronic grade product, has seen it slip behind its rivals in terms of production scale.

Energy Dome’s emission-free energy storage method uses carbon dioxide in a closed loop charge/discharge cycle that can store and dispatch renewable energy onto the grid over periods from four to 24 hours.

SMA is offering a new line of four inverters with power ratings of 12kW, 15kW, 20kW and 25kW, for use in rooftop PV systems up to 135kW in size. It claims the inverters provide grid-compliant power control of entire systems and enable over-dimensioning of PV arrays by up to 150%.

Also on the rise: Lots of optimism about Build Back Better, ITC more at SEIA finance seminar. A pilot managed by Enel X will supply the Ontario grid with demand response loads from 14 sites. New solar trailer bus tags along in Munich. Solar Landscape completes final project under New Jersey’s community solar pilot program. Evolving requirements in the solar + storage industry–the first in a series. Comcast signs up for 250MW of Illinois solar.

Munich, Germany’s municipal bus fleet will now be equipped with solar-powered trailer units.

Indra Overland, the head of the Center for Energy Research at the Norwegian Institute for International Affairs, tells pv magazine how the Ukraine war is irreversibly changing the global energy landscape, making massive renewables deployment a certainty. But labor issues, equipment shortages, and reliance on Chinese manufacturing remain obstacles.

Rystad Energy and BloombergNEF indicate that the impact of the war has sent prices of fossil fuel-tied forms of hydrogen production surging, leaving the gradual but consistent downward price trend of green hydrogen now looking remarkably competitive.

The Bighorn Solar Project has been completed by McCarthy Building in partnership with project owner Lightsource bp.

Business data analyst IHS Markit published a series of clean tech predictions for the year that also highlighted the rising proportion of sub-5MW solar projects in the global market, and cheaper clean energy financing costs even as panel prices continue to rise.

Scientists in Germany designed a poly-Si on oxide (POLO) interdigitated back-contact (IBC) solar cell integrating photon crystals and found this architecture has the potential to reach a power conversion efficiency of over 28%, which would be 1% higher than the current practical limit set by the scientific community. They also found that by improving passivation, the efficiency may be raised up to 29.1%.