Technology and R&D

U.S.-based PV Evolution Labs (PVEL) has found that Vikram Solar’s Somera monocrystalline silicon and Eldora polycrystalline silicon PV modules met and exceeded international quality and performance benchmarks.

A research team has applied a waterproof coating obtained from graphite to a perovskite cell intended to power the production of hydrogen underwater. The cell is said to have worked underwater longer than expected.

Waste-to-energy, battery lifecycle solutions and hazardous waste management will make up an increased share of Fortum’s business in future. While solar will continue to be a mainstay for the Finnish clean energy company in India, Fortum wants to deepen its presence in the electric vehicle space with smart solutions, according to Sanjay Aggarwal, the company’s India MD, and Juha Suomi, area director for Asia, who spoke exclusively to pv magazine.

According to the Korean manufacturer, its Q.Peak Duo-G6 module is produced with larger wafers than those used in the G5. This is said to increase module yield by around 6% for a power output ranging from 355-420 W.

Government-owned Bharat Heavy Electricals and the Automotive Research Association of India will combine their respective strengths in technology development and testing and certification to work on electric and trolley buses, EV chargers and battery and charger testing.

Founded in 2016, Prescinto Technologies is an industrial internet of things solution provider to the solar sector. After two years, Prescinto has found a footing in 13 countries across 4 GW of solar plant capacity. Backed by Gensol Group’s engineering experience across 20 GWs of renewable projects, Prescinto is able to transform that knowledge into code and empowers plants ‘onboarded’ on its platform.

The result was certified by the solar cells laboratory at the calibration and test center of Germany’s Institute for Solar Energy Research. Imec’s measurements showed cell bifaciality surpassed 80%.

Finnish clean-energy company Fortum has achieved the Lithium-ion battery recycling rate of over 80%—as against the current 50%—with a low-CO2 hydrometallurgical recycling process.

Some manufacturers have started to bring self-learning algorithms and artificial intelligence into their monitoring systems and have indicated this in our market overview. In this way, they seek to reduce the personnel costs of O&M service providers. Although humans still have the upper hand in many processes, artificial intelligence is on the rise.

The high efficiency series can be used in multiple application scenarios like utility-scale ground-mount and distributed PV projects. An increase in the output of modules from 370W to 415W will help reduce the balance-of-system cost by 4.5% to 8.5%, and reduce levelized cost of electricity (LCoE) by 2.5% to 4.6%.