Developed by Germany’s Fraunhofer ISE, the cell is manufactured with metallization based on a plating process. The device was built with galvanic nickel/copper/silver contacts instead of common silver contacts.

The tandem cell was fabricated by German scientists through a process flow that is compatible with industrial, mainstream PERC technologies. According to its creators, the device has the potential to exceed efficiencies of over 29% with adjustments in the perovskite thickness and bandgap.

Two industry experts have provided analyses of the current polysilicon price scenario in a chat with pv magazine and both agreed that polysilicon demand is still growing faster than supply. The price may decrease starting from the second quarter and reach more reasonable levels by the end of the year.

French start-up Solar Cloth is planning to scale up capacity at its module production facility near Cannes. The factory will produce 17.6%-efficient flexible solar modules integrated into textile supports.

The Korean manufacturer said its solar module business will be closed by the end of June. It blamed uncertainties in the global solar industry for its decision.

The 40MW/60MWh Alaminos Energy Storage system is now connected to the 120MW Alaminos solar park. Both facilities were built by renewable energy developer AC Energy.

US start-up mPower Technology is scaling up its flexible crystalline silicon solar module technology for spatial and terrestrial applications. The back-contact solar panels consist of micro-singulated silicon dies that are “hyper-interconnected” in series or in parallel. The devices have efficiency ranging from 22 to 23% depending on the size or applications.

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%.

Soluna’s new generator can be combined in a two-unit system to reach a capacity of 2.5kWh. It features built-in 120V(AC) output, continuous AC output power of 1,200W, and peak output of up to 2,400W.

Seaborg Technologies, a Danish manufacturer of molten salt nuclear reactors, has turned a technology that was originally developed for nuclear power into a large-scale storage solution for wind and solar. It has developed a storage system that uses renewable energy to heat salt with electrical heaters, based on two-tank molten salt storage designs developed for concentrated solar power plants.