World

A new report by the International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA) finds that round‑the‑clock solar and wind paired with battery storage deliver power at lower cost than new fossil fuel generation in high‑quality resource regions.

Over a 30-year asset life, corrosion can evolve into a structural, electrical, and fire safety issue. Corrosion drives up operations and maintenance (O&M) costs, reduces resilience to extreme events, and in some cases, can force premature decommissioning or complete structural replacement Intertek CEA’s Nicholas Hudson and Ankil Sanghvi advise on best practices.

A German research team has developed a nondestructive, on-site method to quantify water ingress in photovoltaic modules using near-infrared absorption (NIRA) spectroscopy calibrated with Karl–Fischer titration (KFT). The approach enables precise measurement of absolute moisture content in sealed modules without disassembly, improving inspection, failure analysis, and lifetime prediction.

A single benchmark no longer exists. In some cases, charging speed is what matters; in others, it is energy density, and in still others, cost and scalability. In other words, the battery is ceasing to be a simple component. It is becoming the transversal energy infrastructure of the next industrial cycle. And those who can control not only the technology but also production, integration, and the grid will have an advantage that will be difficult to recover.

The 1.6 MW Nexus pilot project in California has demonstrated that solar panels installed over irrigation canals can significantly reduce water evaporation and algae growth by 85%, while also showing operational efficiency.

The system features AI-driven energy management, 10,000-cycle battery life, and scalable expansion up to 126 kWh.

The upcoming Solar Manufacturing USA 2026 conference in Austin will focus on real U.S. solar manufacturing progress, shifting attention from capacity announcements to actual production, costs, yields, and technology choices across the full value chain. It will also examine how policy changes and tariffs are driving domestic expansion in ingots, wafers, cells, and modules, while highlighting competing technologies like back contact, heterojunction and TOPCon.

A King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST) researcher whose lab has demonstrated up to 100% accuracy using a single hardware counter tells pv magazine that firmware-level detection of inverter attacks is technically viable – but today’s communication standards do not transmit the firmware‑integrity signal to operators.

For years, the battery energy storage (BESS) story has followed a familiar script: costs fall, deployment accelerates, economics improve. Even when cell costs rose and system prices briefly flattened during the 2021-22 lithium price spike, the narrative largely held. Paola Perez Peña, senior principal analyst at S&P Global Energy, examines why the latest jump in lithium prices has only had limited impacts on overall BESS costs so far.

Rosi has raised more than €20 million in a Series B funding round to scale its photovoltaic module recycling business and build a new 10,000-tonne-per-year facility in Teruel, Spain. The company uses pyrolysis-based technology to recover high-purity materials including silver, silicon, copper, aluminium and glass from end-of-life solar modules.