Western Europe

Tesla has secured approval from the Berlin-Brandenburg administrative court to start clearing 91 hectares of forest for its first European “gigafactory,” which is scheduled to start operations in summer 2021.

The 100 MW tender was five times oversubscribed.

The leaders in solar module-level power electronics are profitable and making enormous jumps in revenue. All signs point to a strong 2020 for residential solar — which could keep the momentum going.

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.

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.

Executive and boardroom moves in solar, storage, project development, cleantech, utilities and venture capital.

Illegally re-badged panels were sold to Senegal, Burkina Faso, Nigeria, Morocco, Mauritania, Turkey and Syria. Italian authorities found 60 tons of panels.

The efficiency of the cell, made with a standard M2 wafer, was raised 0.7% by using an improved busbar-free screen printing metallization based on heterojunction processes developed with manufacturing equipment provided by Swiss specialist Meyer Burger.

The coronavirus outbreak in China could raise solar module prices in the near term as manufacturers have already begun experiencing wafer and solar glass shortages. Production rates are also being affected by an extended new year holiday introduced by the authorities as a measure to deal with the virus, and the requirement workers from infected areas quarantine themselves for two weeks.

The German network operator reported approximately 339 MW of new solar in December. New installations for 2019 exceeded new capacity additions in 2018 by more than 1 GW.