Trina Solar is now testing a half-frame solar panel for use with solar trackers with hopes to lower the cost per watt for solar by 1 cent or about 2% overall, said Steven Zhu, the president of the company’s America Region, based in San Jose, in an interview Friday.
The UK Solar Trade Association announced twice this week that the country’s solar fleet broke the peak generation record set originally two years ago, highlighting the need for solar to be allowed to participate on a level playing field in the country’s energy mix.
The National Renewable Energy Laboratory, which regularly publishes a chart of the world’s most efficient solar cells, has introduced a new chart of record-efficiency solar modules.
On March 16, California set a new all time record for solar energy production. Between grid scale solar and behind the meter solar, as much as 16 megawatts of solar electricity was available just before 3 pm on that day.
Researchers in the Netherlands have combined perovskite and conventional solar cells into one bifacial solar panel with an efficiency greater than 30%.
A novel combination of high-grade spacecraft solar cell material and advanced light-concentrating lenses has yielded solar panels with a record 29% efficiency that may become available for general rooftop use by 2022. The crux in the commercialization of the planar optical micro-tracking technology will be cost-controlling manufacturing process, which is the current stage of study for Insolight, the cell developer.
I started covering the solar energy industry seriously in 2009. It seemed like a hopping, exciting time in the industry — growth was exploding. I remember one early story in which readers admonished me a little because I put “Solar Power Exploding” in a headline, and they thought I was referring to genuine explosions. In 2019, 2009 and 2010 progress looks like anthills.
Alta Devices’ record-setting solar cell has just begun a one-year test by NASA in the latest Materials International Space Station Experiment (MISSE-X) flight investigation, launched in November on board the NG CRS-10 mission. NASA is testing Alta Devices solar technology at the Space Station in order to evaluate the technology for future NASA low-Earth orbit missions, including powering CubeSats, a trending, small, inexpensive satellite design.
Moving forward with our monthly What Changed … ? feature, below is a rundown of notable solar energy news — changed in the solar industry — during the month of November.
When it comes to clean technology, German Chancellor Angela Merkel says China is no longer seen as a developing country but a competitor.
