Manufacturing

Hyderabad-based Allox Minerals looks forward to scaling up lithium titanate (LTO) anode and lithium ferrophosphate (LFP) cathode material production for electric vehicle batteries as the demand arises. It produces these materials using the economical method developed by International Advanced Research Centre for Powder Metallurgy & New Materials (ARCI). The company is also keen on forward integration up to battery assembly.

Next Energy and Marubeni are developing a blockchain tech for PV module inspection – with the support of the Japanese government – which they claim is able to provide data on a panel’s traceability and components as well as verifying that the data were not modified or tampered with.

Developed by the Korea Institute of Energy Research (KIER), the “non-destructive” technology is claimed to enable the recovery of 100% of a module’s glass and to allow the reuse of silicon for producing new solar cells with an efficiency of 20.05%.

Australian National University researchers claim to have set a world record for bifacial solar cell efficiency that they say could boost the energy output of solar farms by 30%.

An order issued in late June instructed US customs agents to detain solar shipments containing silica-based products sourced from a Chinese firm and its subsidiaries. Three solar players may already have been impacted.

An Indian-Malaysian research group has investigated the effectiveness of several passive cooling techniques for solar panels, including the placement of plants around the modules or coir pith underneath them, both of which, surprisingly, offered good performance in terms of temperature reduction and power yield.

The switch from fossil fuels and nuclear will bring a jobs dividend thanks to the greater labor-intensity of renewables plants, according to a paper published by Finland’s LUT. However, the jobs dividend is unlikely to be evenly spread around the world, with Europe set to be a big winner.

Supersola has developed a 315 W, half-cut monocrystalline PV module. It costs €699 and can be coupled with other two panels to form a 1 kW residential PV system.

Bauer Solartechnik GmbH has released its new 400 W and 405 W BS-M10 PV panel series for rooftop projects.

Scientists in Italy have created a hybrid thermoelectric photovoltaic (HTEPV) system based on a thermoelectric generator and a wide-gap perovskite solar cell. The device is able to recover waste heat from the PV unit and produce additional power. According to its creators, this configuration needs large gap cells as these are less sensitive to temperature in terms of efficiency.