Author: solarenergy

Researchers at TU Berlin say early demand for 24-hour carbon-free electricity could help bring advanced energy technologies to market faster through technology learning effects. The grant for the research was provided by Google, which has since announced plans to build the world’s largest iron-air battery. March 9, 2026 Matthew Lynas Early adoption of 24/7 carbon-free energy purchasing could quickly reduce the costs of new energy generation and storage technologies, potentially accelerating deployment and making 24-hour clean energy commercially viable, according to researchers from TU Berlin and Princeton University. The research suggests that a virtuous circle of innovation can be activated…

Despite the promise of good conversion efficiency and relatively low costs, copper-indium-gallium-diselenide (CIGS) photovoltaic technology has never been able to compete with crystalline silicon and has been largely limited to the niche market for building-integrated solar photovoltaics (BIPV). High-efficiency laboratory processes for CIGS have thus far failed to scale economically to high-throughput industrial production. For example, record CIGS cells are achieved under tightly optimized growth conditions with narrow compositional and thermal windows. Such precision is manageable on small laboratory substrates, but becomes increasingly difficult on large areas where maintaining uniform stoichiometry, phase purity, and defect control requires complex vacuum infrastructure…

The National Energy System Operator’s (NESO) one-year Capacity Market (CM) auction has concluded, securing 7,192 MW of commitments, of which approximately 8% was battery storage.The T1 auction applies to delivery year 2026/2027 and saw 80% of the capacity obligations fulfilled by gas and nuclear energy, as shown in the table below. The CM pays operators for their availability during specific stress periods, predicted based on NESO models on when capacity shortages in the electricity system may occur. The clearance price was £5/kw/year, three quarters lower than last year. Battery energy storage system (BESS) projects have generated 576 MW of commitments,…

The electric grid is a real bottleneck for energy supply in the United States, and it’s not just utilities and grid operators that are struggling. Grid congestion also puts pressure on the owners of renewable energy projects and is both a business and technical problem, writes Alon Mashkovich, CEO of energy management software provider enSights. March 9, 2026 Alon Mashkovitch From pv magazine 26/2 Congestion on the electricity grid limits the value that renewable energy sources can deliver. This is especially painful for projects that are technically complete, fully permitted and funded, yet unable to bring in the targeted revenues.…

A research team from the Wuhan National Laboratory for Optoelectronics and the School of Optical and Electronic Information of Huazhong University of Science and Technology has reported a new advance in all-perovskite tandem solar cells, solving a major bottleneck in tunnel crossing design. All perovskite tandem solar cells are considered a high-potential photovoltaic technology, with a theoretical energy conversion efficiency approaching 45 percent. In practice, however, device performance has fallen short of these limits, partly due to losses and resistance at the tunnel junction connecting the upper high bandgap cell to the lower low bandgap cell. In the work reported…

Green Lancera national solar energy contractor, carries this out SolarGrade Software to support its residential and commercial solar field services. GreenLancer commissions SolarGrade to support its fieldwork activities. “We chose SolarGrade because their team’s deep understanding of solar quality is embedded in their intuitive software platform,” said Pat McCabe, COO of GreenLancer. “Unlike every other app we tested, SolarGrade is purpose-built for solar technicians and office teams to complete service calls correctly.” Since launching its nationwide home solar repair services in August 2025, GreenLancer has built a network of nearly 200 field service partners to support solar projects whose original…

From the magazine At the end of 2024, the United States had around 42.5 GW of manufacturing capacity for PV modules, according to numbers from market intelligence provider Wood Mackenzie. By September 2025, that had increased by 35% to just over 60 GW, and Wood Mackenzie research analyst Elissa Pierce expects the year-end 2025 figure to come in at 64 GW. “We expect a little bit of continued growth in module capacity for 2026 and 2027, with a couple more factories scheduled to expand or come online,” Pierce told pv magazine. “But we’ll see less now, because we have enough capacity in…

Choosing a solar installer in North Carolina is one of the bigger decisions you will make as a homeowner. The panels going on your roof today will be there for 25 to 40 years, and the company you hire will be your partner for every service call, warranty claim, and system upgrade during that entire period. Get it right, and solar pays for itself many times over. Get it wrong, and you could be dealing with an underperforming system and a company that is hard to reach. Two names often come up for North Carolina homeowners: 8MSolar and NC Solar…

Hydrogen bonds, best known for holding water and biomolecules together, now play a powerful role in solar energy conversion as part of a new supramolecular photocatalyst for water oxidation. Researchers from Inner Mongolia University and Tsinghua University report that carefully designed hydrogen bond interactions can reshape charge behavior in organic photocatalysts, opening a route to more efficient artificial photosynthesis. The team constructed a photocatalyst in which hydrogen bonds connect an electron donor, a perylene diimide supramolecule, to an electron acceptor, an aminated fullerene unit. These hydrogen bonds create a highly polarized local environment that improves dielectric shielding and weakens the…

Fronius USA has launched PV Point Comfort, a device that backs up energy to a branch circuit using power passing through a solar inverter. PV Point Comfort from Fronius USA. Building on the basic PV Point model, the PV Point Comfort delivers energy while the sun shines, even without adding a battery. When power from the electricity grid fails, PV Point Comfort automatically provides backup power. PV Point Comfort can power a branch circuit to keep critical loads such as routers, refrigerators or outdoor circuits online. The system can be installed on an additional printed circuit board that is placed…