Manufacturing

The clean energy arm of Reliance Industries Limited will invest US$ 50 million in MIT-incubated Ambri. As part of the transaction the two companies will also partner to develop and manufacture liquid metal batteries in India.

Mónica LiraCantú leads a research group investigating nanostructured materials for photovoltaic energy at the Catalan Institute of Nanoscience and Nanotechnology (ICN2). Recently, her group led a project that looked deep into the crystalline structure of a perovskite solar cell, revealing new information about the formation of defects in the material and how they could be engineered to improve both efficiency and stability. pv magazine caught up with the Barcelona-based scientist to discuss the state of the art in perovskite solar cells and remaining challenges on the road to commercialization.

Auto glass producer Asahi India Glass and polyfilm maker Vishakha Group have teamed up to set up India’s largest solar glass plant in Gujarat. The factory is initially planned to have a capacity equivalent to 3 GW of solar installation per annum. 

German researchers developed a lattice arrangement of three different layers of ferroelectric crystals that created a powerful photovoltaic effect.

Developed by a Vietnamese-Korean research group, the complex PV device was built with a bottom bifacial crystalline silicon perovskite-filtered heterojunction sub-cell that is able to absorb all solar spectra in the short-wavelength range.

The company will initially launch 750 electric buses across key intercity and inter-state transit routes in Southern and Western India. To support the e-bus rollout, it is also building a captive charging infrastructure network across highways with 600 DC chargers of 180/240 kW capacity rating.

The Swiss group has acquired an integrated solar roof system solution from an unidentified German engineering service provider for this purpose. The aim is grow this sector from a niche market.

The energy payback time of a silicon PV rooftop system mounted in India is only 0.44 of one year (160.6 days), compared to 0.53-0.67 year in Africa, 1-1.3 years in Europe, and 1.42 years in Canada, reveals a world map by German research body the Fraunhofer Institute of Solar Energy Systems (ISE). For the calculation, the report authors considered the installation used a typical, Chinese-made, 60-cell, PERC, 19.9%-efficient solar module.

With manufacturing ramping up year by year and policies already looking to get ahead of the large volumes of end-of-life products, the landscape for lithium-ion battery recycling is rapidly changing. pv magazine recently spoke with Mari Lundström, associate professor of chemical and metallurgical engineering at Aalto University, to find out what is needed on the research side for the effective recycling of batteries.

The U.S.-based manufacturer is planning a vertically integrated thin-film solar module manufacturing facility in India. The factory will likely be built in Tamil Nadu and become operational in the second half of 2023.