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The US National Laboratory of the Rockies (NLR) has verified that TOPCon modules from Chinese manufacturer Runergy achieve a conversion efficiency of 25.9%. These panels are part of the company’s TOPCon 3.0 lineup, its third-generation TOPCon offering introduced at Intersolar Europe in June. At that event, Runergy reported a maximum cell conversion efficiency of 26.9%, which is marginally above the NLR-verified figure, though the firm emphasized that the module-level efficiency still stands as a benchmark for all non-HBC crystalline-silicon modules.
Runergy also noted that the standard-format, mass-produced version of this series would deliver a power output ranging from 660W to 670W, thereby exceeding the thresholds set by the Chinese government during the summer. Beginning next year, TOPCon modules must meet a conversion efficiency of 23.2% and a minimum rated power of 630W to be eligible for sale. The company credits the strong performance of its latest modules to a multi-cut circuit architecture designed to reduce internal power losses.
Tao Longzhong, Runergy’s general manager and PV R&D laboratory director, stated that this achievement is not merely a new TOPCon module world record. He stressed that the module is produced using cells and processes from pilot lines ready for mass production, demonstrating that high efficiency and commercial scalability are compatible.
The focus on rapidly deployable modules is notable given that solar installations in China surged in July. Data from China’s National Energy Administration (NEA) shows that over 14GW of new solar PV capacity was added in July, representing a 28% year-on-year increase. Yet the longer-term outlook remains uncertain, as the China Photovoltaic Industry Association (CPIA) projects annual capacity additions to decline from 315GW last year to between 180GW and 240GW this year, as the sector seeks to curb expansion in response to persistently low prices. NEA figures indicate that China added 86.2GW of new capacity in the first seven months of 2026, a trajectory that would place year-end additions below even the CPIA’s more conservative forecast.
Interactive table based on the Store Companies dataset for this report.
This report provides a comprehensive view of the solar cells and light-emitting diodes industry in China, tracking demand, supply, and trade flows across the national value chain. It explains how demand across key channels and end-use segments shapes consumption patterns, while also mapping the role of input availability, production efficiency, and regulatory standards on supply.
Beyond headline metrics, the study benchmarks prices, margins, and trade routes so you can see where value is created and how it moves between domestic suppliers and international partners. The analysis is designed to support strategic planning, market entry, portfolio prioritization, and risk management in the solar cells and light-emitting diodes landscape in China.
The report combines market sizing with trade intelligence and price analytics for China. It covers both historical performance and the forward outlook to 2035, allowing you to compare cycles, structural shifts, and policy impacts.
This report provides a consistent view of market size, trade balance, prices, and per-capita indicators for China. The profile highlights demand structure and trade position, enabling benchmarking against regional and global peers.
The analysis is built on a multi-source framework that combines official statistics, trade records, company disclosures, and expert validation. Data are standardized, reconciled, and cross-checked to ensure consistency across time series.
All data are normalized to a common product definition and mapped to a consistent set of codes. This ensures that comparisons across time are aligned and actionable.
The forecast horizon extends to 2035 and is based on a structured model that links solar cells and light-emitting diodes demand and supply to macroeconomic indicators, trade patterns, and sector-specific drivers. The model captures both cyclical and structural factors and reflects known policy and technology shifts in China.
Each projection is built from national historical patterns and the broader regional context, allowing the report to show where growth is concentrated and where risks are elevated.
Prices are analyzed in detail, including export and import unit values, regional spreads, and changes in trade costs. The report highlights how seasonality, freight rates, exchange rates, and supply disruptions influence pricing and margins.
Key producers, exporters, and distributors are profiled with a focus on their operational scale, geographic footprint, product mix, and market positioning. This helps identify competitive pressure points, partnership opportunities, and routes to differentiation.
This report is designed for manufacturers, distributors, importers, wholesalers, investors, and advisors who need a clear, data-driven picture of solar cells and light-emitting diodes dynamics in China.
The market size aggregates consumption and trade data, presented in both value and volume terms.
The projections combine historical trends with macroeconomic indicators, trade dynamics, and sector-specific drivers.
Yes, it includes export and import unit values, regional spreads, and a pricing outlook to 2035.
The report benchmarks market size, trade balance, prices, and per-capita indicators for China.
Yes, it highlights demand hotspots, trade routes, pricing trends, and competitive context.
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Concise View of Market Direction
Market Size, Growth and Scenario Framing
Commercial and Technical Scope
How the Market Splits Into Decision-Relevant Buckets
Where Demand Comes From and How It Behaves
Supply Footprint and Value Capture
Trade Flows and External Dependence
Price Formation and Revenue Logic
Who Wins and Why
How the Domestic Market Works
Commercial Entry and Scaling Priorities
Where the Best Expansion Logic Sits
Leading Players and Strategic Archetypes
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Aug 24 (Reuters) – Tesla has stopped selling premium solar roof tiles on its website, nearly ​a decade after CEO Elon ‌Musk launched the product as a more attractive alternative to panels.
• Tesla’s solar roof url now redirects to a ‌solar ​panels offering.
• Discontinuation ⁠of the product ⁠was first reported by Electrek last week.
• Tesla did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
• ​Musk unveiled the roof tiles in 2016 as Tesla sought ⁠to acquire SolarCity, ⁠the solar installer run ​by his cousins.
• The company in ​2021 had targeted 1,000 installations per ‌week, but industry estimates said the actual figure was far less.
• Tesla’s solar strategy has shifted ⁠to traditional panels, which it produces at its factory in Buffalo, New York, and ⁠began ‌delivering to residential customers ⁠this year.
• Musk still ​has ‌big ambitions in solar. Tesla ​filed plans ⁠in Texas this month for a $10.1 billion solar-cell factory outside Houston that would create 9,712 permanent jobs.
(Reporting by Nichola Groom; Editing by ​Mark Porter)
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That support had not initially reached some East L.A. residents living only blocks from the warehouse.
Photo Credit: iStock
After the Lineage warehouse fire left the area with foul air and drove many families to keep air purifiers and air conditioning running for long stretches, hundreds of East Los Angeles households are in line for help with swollen power bills.
Boyle Heights Beat reported that the one-time $200 credits were secured after residents pushed for aid and Los Angeles County Supervisor Hilda Solis pressed for relief to be extended beyond Boyle Heights.
According to Boyle Heights Beat, as cited by LAist, Lineage contributed $26,600 so that 133 Southern California Edison customers in unincorporated East Los Angeles can receive automatic $200 credits on their bills.
That support had not initially reached some East L.A. residents living only blocks from the warehouse, even though Lineage had already earmarked $50,000 for 218 Los Angeles Department of Water and Power customers in Boyle Heights.
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In a statement to Boyle Heights Beat, Solis criticized the uneven distribution of aid after the June 17 fire, saying East Los Angeles residents “deserved the same level of support through Southern California Edison.”
For households hit with bigger electric bills, the credit can cover part of the extra cost of keeping indoor air safer and homes more livable. People who want a longer-term way to lower energy costs may also look to solar, and EnergySage can help people get free installation estimates and compare quotes.
The East L.A. relief was limited to customers inside a Zone 2 area that runs from Indiana Street to Hicks Avenue and from Union Pacific Avenue to the 5 Freeway, even as odor and air-quality complaints spread beyond that stretch.
Lineage said the assistance would expand west to Herbert Avenue and cover hundreds of additional East L.A. households. The outlet also reported that the company has not finalized the exact amount of support and that some Southern California Edison customers are still waiting for the credits to show up.
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The immediate response is utility-bill relief funded by the warehouse owner and automatically applied to eligible accounts. That approach lets residents avoid extra paperwork while dealing with the lingering effects of the fire.
Energy savings tools can also help households cut costs far beyond a one-time credit. EnergySage offers free services for comparing solar options, and with EnergySage’s help, the average person can save up to $10,000 on solar purchases and installations. Readers can also use EnergySage’s solar map, which shows the average cost of a home solar panel system on a state-by-state basis and details solar panel incentives in each state, helping shoppers get the best price for rooftop solar panels and access available incentives.
Adding battery storage to a solar setup is one of the best ways to protect your home during outages, save money on energy, and go off grid. Homeowners interested in backup power can explore EnergySage for information about home battery storage options, including competitive installation estimates.
The dispute over who receives relief has also shown how costly disaster recovery can become for nearby families. As Solis said in her statement to Boyle Heights Beat, “Lineage has a responsibility to provide fair and equitable support to everyone affected by this disaster, including delivering the remaining $25,000 in utility assistance that was allocated for East Los Angeles residents.”
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Solar panels maker Avaada Electro files updated DRHP for Rs 7,600-crore IPO  Moneycontrol.com
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Partly cloudy skies. A stray shower or thunderstorm is possible. Low 73F. Winds NNE at 5 to 10 mph..
Partly cloudy skies. A stray shower or thunderstorm is possible. Low 73F. Winds NNE at 5 to 10 mph.
Updated: August 25, 2026 @ 11:10 pm
Rick Elnicki standing in front of a solar panel with the 22-acre pond in the background. (All photos by Morgan Earl.) 
The blue containers are the filtration system that the pond water runs through before it goes out to the field.
Subsurface irrigation feeds water directly to the plants’ root system. Meaning, the soil surface is dry most of the time.

Rick Elnicki standing in front of a solar panel with the 22-acre pond in the background. (All photos by Morgan Earl.) 
In the 1980s, when Rick Elnicki started farming Northeast of Frontenac, Kansas, he had hopes of irrigating. Unfortunately, those plans fell through. He was left farming dryland until 1993, when he eventually sold out and started Cameo Grain. “The reason I got into the grain business was because farming was so tough. If it doesn’t rain, you don’t grow a crop, and it was very hard. You’d have years that you’d go through and invest a lot of money,” said Elnicki. Little did he know, 33 years later, he’d finally get the opportunity to irrigate. FARM TALK recently visited Elnicki’s operation, where he explained how he went from farming dryland to using solar energy to power his subsurface drip irrigation system.
Elnicki has been interested in irrigating since 1980. “I always thought in the back of my mind that someday I’m going to irrigate, and then I can go out there during a drought, and I’ll have a lush crop,” he said. The opportunity came 12 years ago when his son purchased farm land with a 22-acre pond, Northeast of Frontenac, Kansas as well. The pond eliminated the need to dig a well, which is a costly endeavor. They just had to figure out how they were going to get enough water in the pond to irrigate 113 acres throughout the growing season. With a lot of preparation and dirt work, they were able to build waterways directly to the pond to collect runoff water. Once that was done, it was a matter of figuring out how he could pump water out of the pond and what kind of irrigation system to use.
The blue containers are the filtration system that the pond water runs through before it goes out to the field.
About seven years ago, he started to research NutraDrip Irrigation and reached out. He attended a few informal meetings and watched videos of how the system worked. He decided to utilize the subsurface drip system. This type of irrigation directly waters the crops’ root system, making it a more efficient method. The company didn’t have a sales representative in the area at the time, so when Travis Rokey later moved to the area, they were ready to start the process. The only thing left to figure out was how to pump the water out of the pond.
Subsurface irrigation feeds water directly to the plants’ root system. Meaning, the soil surface is dry most of the time.
Elnicki noticed how much input cost other farmers were putting into their irrigation practices. The cost of fuel and oil needed to keep the generators and sometimes tractors running to pump water adds up quickly. He wanted to go in a direction that would cut down on costs in the long run. That’s when he decided to integrate solar panels into his operation. He applied for a USDA grant program that helped fund half of the initial cost and got started. He worked with Daniel Zywietz from SEK Solar to get the panels working and pumping water out of the pond. Elnicki has two panels on the property, one facing east and one facing west. That way, as the sun rises and falls, he can collect as much energy as possible. He also has a battery station that houses twelve batteries. “By having batteries, you can start earlier in the morning. Then in the afternoon, after the batteries are depleted, you start generating more energy than the pump uses so it fills the batteries back up”, said Elnicki. He added that the batteries allow him to pump more water either in the morning or at night.
This will be the first year of irrigating using the solar-powered energy on his soybean crop. Elnicki said,  “It sounds like a lot, 13 million (gallons of water), but on 113 acres, that’s only 4 inches down where it does the most good, in the root zone.” When asked about future plans, he said: “We probably will eventually add some more batteries just so we’ll be able to run a little longer, or we could add more acres.”
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Adelaide-headquartered solar and electrical construction company Solmech has delivered a hybrid retrofit at the 4.1 MW Warnertown Solar Farm in South Australia, replacing six of the site’s Sungrow PV inverters with hybrid alternatives, each paired with a 200k Wh Powerkeeper battery unit, adding a total of 1.2 MWh of new storage capacity.
Located about 215 kilometres north of South Australian capital Adelaide, the Warnertown Solar Farm was built in 2001 and initially comprised a 2.5 MW ground-mounted PV system. A 1.6 MW second stage was added in 2023.
With the asset owner looking to maximise the value of the existing infrastructure, Solmech teamed with Chinese PV inverter and energy storage technology manufacturer Sungrow to add battery energy storage at the site.
Previously operating with 30 Sungrow SG110CX PV inverters, the facility was upgraded with six of the PV inverters replaced with SH110CX hybrid inverters, each paired with a 200 kWh Sungrow Powerkeeper battery.
Sungrow said integrating energy storage directly on the DC side avoids the need for transformer modifications, reduces project complexity, and significantly lowers investment costs, enabling faster deployment and stronger commercial returns.
“South Australia’s strict grid compliance rules often require lengthy approvals and transformer upgrades when adding AC-coupled batteries,” the company said. “Sungrow’s DC-coupled hybrid solution helps minimise these challenges and supports a smooth integration.”
Sungrow said the upgraded system has been designed to maximise the value of the solar farm, allowing it to operate more intelligently within South Australia’s dynamic wholesale electricity market.
“Battery storage can capture surplus solar generation and discharge energy when it is more valuable, helping the asset respond more effectively to changing generation conditions and electricity market signals,” the company said.
Solmech co-founder Newman Mundy said the upgrade had been seamless from installation through commissioning with the existing inverters simply swapped out for the new hybrid technology, while the design ensured the new equipment fitted within the existing shelter and required virtually no civil modifications
“The retrofit was really straightforward,” he said. “We simply replaced the existing inverters with hybrid units and added the PowerKeeper batteries. The compact design made installation fast and efficient.”
Sungrow technical support engineer Rock Liu said the Warnertown project demonstrates the company’s ability to tailor its storage solution to site-specific constraints including available grid capacity, transformer limits and site layout.
“Every site comes with different constraints, whether it’s available grid capacity, transformer limits or site layout. This upgrade shows we can tailor PowerKeeper to fit within those constraints and still deliver strong benefits for the owner,” he said.
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Entries open in seven categories: Modules, Inverters, BoS, BESS, Manufacturing, Sustainability, Projects.
April 01 – August 31, 2026
Thursday, October 7, 2026
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Argentina’s solar industry has had to adapt since the RenovAR renewable energy public procurement program was shuttered in 2025. Reliance on large, centralized tenders has been replaced with private sector contracts. RenovAR launched in 2016 and ran four successful tenders, adding new clean capacity into Argentina’s wholesale electricity market and renewable energy futures market (known …
Our special edition for Intersolar South America 2026 is here!
Discover the latest insights into the Brazilian solar market – in Portuguese.
Entries open in seven categories: Modules, Inverters, BoS, BESS, Manufacturing, Sustainability, Projects.
April 01 – August 31, 2026
A two-day conference in Austin, Texas, bringing together leaders in US solar manufacturing, equipment specification, and factory execution.
Saudi Arabia is accelerating its clean energy transition—join the SunRise Arabia Clean Energy Conference 2026 in Riyadh to explore how solar PV and energy storage are powering its digital economy.
Thursday, August 27, 2026
5:30 am – 6:30 am CEST, Berlin, Paris, Madrid
pv magazine USA hosts its third multi-day virtual event on advancing U.S. solar and energy storage markets, covering financing, supply chains, and distributed energy’s role in grid resilience.
Thursday, October 7, 2026
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German research institute Fraunhofer ISE has developed what it described as “industry-ready” semi-transparent PV modules with a conversion efficiency of up to 9.26%.
Developed in tandem with researchers from the University of Freiburg, the institute developed modules measuring 14.5 centimetres by 14.5 centimetres with an average transparency of 43.2%.
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These use organic solar cells, which use carbon-based materials such as polymers instead of crystalline silicon to convert light into electricity, and this follows considerable innovation in the organic cell sector. Last year, researchers at the Solar Energy Research Institute of Singapore (SERIS) claimed a record 26.4% conversion efficiency in a perovskite-organic tandem solar cell.
More than 100 of these cells make up each module, and consist of three components: a back electrode that reflects near-infrared light, an absorber layer made of organic semiconductors and a top electrode made of the polymer PEDOT:PSS, a blend of two polymers, PEDOT and PSS.
Fraunhofer ISE noted that modules with a transparency of over 50% could be used “in place of window glad in building facades or greenhouses,” and Dr Uli Würfel, head of the Organic and Perovskite Photovoltaics Department at Fraunhofer ISE, expressed optimism about the future of the modules.
“Scaling up to larger areas is one of the major challenges in organic photovoltaics,” said Würfel. “The fact that we have now, for the first time, successfully and with virtually no loss applied all the layers of the solar cells using the slot-die process is a major breakthrough for us.”
The research organisation also noted that the manufacturing process uses sputtering and slot-die coating methods, which it says are “industrially proven and highly scalable to large module areas”, which could address the scaling challenge identified by Würfel. Sputtering is a thin film creation process that is used to deposit the back electrode onto a glass substrate in the organic solar cell; meanwhile, slot-die coating is a technique for thin film deposition that was used to apply the PEDOT:PSS polymer.
“As part of the project, we have already produced the first flexible, organic PV modules that retain 100% of their original efficiency after 1,274 bending cycles over a rod with a diameter of 15 millimetres,” added Dr Mathias List, research associate for organic and perovskite photovoltaics at Fraunhofer ISE.
The news follows Fraunhofer ISE’s research into coloured films for PV modules that can imitate roof tiles or building facades, which could allow for greater control over the aesthetic appearance of modules.

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After decades of stalled federal action, a permanent disposal site still has not been created.
Photo Credit: Getty Images
The San Onofre nuclear plant has been shut down for years, but one of its biggest dangers is still sitting on the coast. Roughly 3.6 million pounds of spent nuclear fuel remain stored at the site in temporary canisters near the shoreline, raising fresh calls for a regional safety plan while the federal government continues to delay a long-term solution.
In a community opinion piece for Voice of OC, Orange County resident Sarah Mosko said the lack of a permanent federal repository for commercial spent fuel has effectively turned San Onofre into a nuclear waste site.
She said about 3.6 million pounds of highly radioactive waste remain at the facility south of San Clemente in 123 temporary storage canisters. According to Mosko, those canisters were not built for indefinite use and are vulnerable to corrosion and cracking in salty coastal air.
Mosko also said each canister holds cesium-137 equal to roughly one-third of the amount released in the 2011 Fukushima disaster. She argued that the site’s position next to the Pacific Ocean and Interstate 5 adds concerns about flooding, earthquakes, tsunamis, sea-level rise, and security threats.
Nuclear power can generate vast totals of low-carbon electricity and help support grid reliability, which is why some experts see it as part of a cleaner energy mix. Still, San Onofre’s remaining waste presents one of the industry’s most difficult tradeoffs: how to manage dangerous material that must be isolated for extremely long periods.
To show why she sees the issue as urgent, Mosko pointed to the chemical plant scare in Garden Grove as an example of how industrial accidents can suddenly disrupt whole communities. In her view, a failure involving radioactive waste could leave even longer-lasting harm to air, water, public health, and infrastructure.
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The design of San Onofre’s storage setup is central to the debate. Mosko wrote that the waste is held in 5/8-inch steel canisters that sit out in the open at the retired plant on a vulnerable stretch of coastline.
The risks extend beyond the plant itself. A serious contamination event could affect nearby neighborhoods, a major transportation corridor, coastal ecosystems, and regional economic activity. Even without an accident, uncertainty over the waste’s future can weigh on public trust.
After decades of stalled federal action, a permanent disposal site still has not been created. Until Washington does that, local and state leaders may be left trying to reduce the risks where the waste already sits.
Mosko wrote that efforts on a safer interim plan have involved Irvine Mayor Larry Agran, Chief Policy Advisor Scotty Hong, residents, community groups, lawmakers, researchers, and Southern California Edison. She also cited work by Dr. David Richardson, associate dean for research at UC Irvine, and postdoctoral researchers studying the issue.
One proposal under discussion would relocate the canisters, after decommissioning, to higher ground at the adjacent domes site in a fortified above-ground storage facility. Mosko said that approach would aim to improve monitoring, reduce corrosion risks, and better protect the waste from flooding, earthquakes, fire, and security threats.
The proposal also includes a “hot cell,” which Mosko described as a shielded facility for inspecting canisters and repackaging waste if necessary. She pointed to countries including Switzerland and Germany as examples of places using above-ground storage systems designed for inspection and hazard protection.
The San Onofre nuclear waste is in the form of ceramic pellets rather than a liquid like many envision from television and movies, though liquid-form nuclear waste does exist, primarily from weapons development, and there is wastewater used for cooling that needs to be handled carefully since it contains radioactive isotopes. Depending on how the water was used, it may be released slowly or mixed into other materials — like cements, polymers, or resins — to solidify it from being released back into the environment. 
In the San Onofre case, public concern has already been visible. In May and June, banners hung over Interstate 5 near the site reading “Nuclear Waste Forever Deadly” and “3 Million Pounds of Radioactivity … Next Exit.”
A permanent federal solution could still be years away. Until then, Southern California’s focus is on how to store the waste already at San Onofre as safely as possible.
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Transparent solar panels built to replace window glasses without blocking out light  Yahoo Tech
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Homebuyer pays to transfer solar access, gets bounced between companies, and is left in limbo  Yahoo
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Tuesday, August 25, 2026 86° Today’s Paper
By Paul Bernstein
Today • Updated 9:46 p.m.
Paul Bernstein
JAMM AQUINO / 2025
HI Power Solar worker Kaipo Enos-Ho performs a solar panel installation at a Hawaii Kai home on July 11, 2025.
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Hurricane Lala knocked out electricity to hundreds of thousands of people in Hawaii. Although power was restored relatively quickly in some areas, the most severely damaged communities could remain without electricity for weeks or even months. It could have been much worse.
Lala’s eye passed about 40 miles from Hawaii island, devastating Ka‘u. Fortunately, most of the rest of the state was spared serious damage. The storm passed about 75 miles from Oahu, for example. Nevertheless, Lala exposed a fundamental vulnerability of Hawaii’s centralized electrical system.
The major cause of the outages was damage to transmission infrastructure, including downed lines. That is consistent with research by the U.S. National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL), which studied 18 hurricanes and found that hurricane-related outages are caused largely by damage to transmission systems.
The difference between centralized and distributed electricity is important. A centralized system may have a chain extending for miles:
Power plant, to transmission lines, to substations, to distribution lines, to home.
Damage to a relatively small number of transmission or distribution components can disconnect enormous numbers of customers. Some transmission lines also run through mountainous terrain, making repairs particularly difficult.
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A distributed system works differently. A rooftop solar system for a single-family home, for example, has a much shorter chain:
Solar panels, to battery/inverter, to home.
Damage to one rooftop system affects only that home, rather than disconnecting thousands of others.
When properly designed, solar-plus-storage systems can continue supplying electricity when the centralized grid fails. NREL concludes that resilient on-site solar and storage can minimize widespread outage impacts when systems are securely installed, designed to withstand high winds, equipped with batteries and capable of “islanding.”
Islanding prevents a rooftop system from sending electricity onto the larger grid when that grid goes down, protecting utility workers from electrocution. At the same time, it allows the system to continue supplying electricity to the home. Increasingly, rooftop systems are being paired with batteries, making this capability practical.
Based on available information, there is no indication that Lala broadly destroyed or rendered Hawaii’s rooftop solar systems useless. Some individual systems undoubtedly may have been damaged, but the storm appears to have demonstrated the vulnerability of the centralized grid rather than the fundamental vulnerability of rooftop solar.
About half of Hawaii’s single-family homes now have rooftop solar. New systems are increasingly paired with batteries, allowing households to use solar energy after sunset and providing backup power when the grid fails.
Hawaii should build on this distributed energy resource. Unfortunately, the state is moving in the opposite direction. In 2026, the state Legislature passed a bill limiting funding for a tax-credit program for rooftop solar, thereby limiting the number of systems that can qualify. The governor commendably issued an executive order allowing the limit to be exceeded in 2026. But that is only a temporary reprieve. The limit takes full effect in 2027, and the bill eliminates the tax credit entirely in 2030.
Ten years ago, Hawaii adopted a goal of achieving net-zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2045. Now the state is backsliding from that goal. Rooftop solar should be encouraged, not discouraged. Substantial tax credits should again be available to everyone who installs it.
Lala was a warning. Hawaii cannot eliminate hurricanes, but it can reduce their consequences. A stronger electrical system isn’t simply one with stronger centralized infrastructure. It is one in which hundreds of thousands of small generators and batteries can keep people powered when the grid goes down.
Paul Bernstein is with the Citizens’ Climate Lobby and Carbon Cashback Hawai‘i.
500 Ala Moana Blvd. #2-200
Honolulu, HI 96813
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One of the largest solar canopies and storage systems in California officially opened Tuesday at the Ventura County Government Center.
The parking lot at the Ventura County Government Center now has a 5.8-megawatt solar array. In addition to providing power, it gives much-appreciated shade to cars parked in the lot.
“We have people who are doing jury duty, going to court, paying traffic tickets. And so hopefully people will see this change and this improvement and will be proud of what their county government is doing,” said Dr Sevet Johnson, Ventura County’s Executive Officer.
Johnson added that the new solar energy canopy and storage will save money and cut emissions.
“Doing this, we’ll save a million a year for the next 20 years, so it’s about $21 million in savings in energy costs. It’s like taking thousands of cars off the road every year. And so when people see the county doing something to modernize our energy infrastructure for the future and have this modern energy, I really hope that’ll be a catalyst.”

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The Vatican is advancing plans to establish a €100 million ($117 million) agrivoltaic energy installation designed to achieve complete operational energy self-sufficiency.
Located on a 450-hectare extraterritorial property in Santa Maria di Galeria, northwest of Rome, the facility will combine large-scale solar power generation with active agricultural farming. With an expected capacity of 80 to 90 megawatts (MW), the project will rank among the largest dual-use solar and agriculture installations in Italy once completed.
The Santa Maria di Galeria installation will deploy elevated solar photovoltaic racks mounted above the ground. This structural height allows heavy agricultural machinery to cultivate crops directly beneath the arrays. Beyond land efficiency, the solar panels create a microclimate that offers ambient shade, mitigating soil moisture evaporation during peak heat waves and protecting crops from severe localized weather. The dual-use setup maintains existing agricultural yields—focusing primarily on low-profile forage crops, wheat, and indigenous vegetation—while simultaneously outputting utility-scale clean electricity.
The generated 80–90 MW will first fulfil the baseline energy demand of Vatican Radio’s global broadcasting apparatus. The surplus power will be routed through dedicated high-voltage transmission lines across municipal Rome to meet the total power requirements of Vatican City itself, alongside affiliated Holy See institutions, including the Bambino Gesù Pediatric Hospital. Integrated BESS will capture daytime generation spikes to ensure uninterrupted power delivery through the night. Excess electricity generated during peak production cycles will be fed directly into Italy’s national energy grid, turning the Holy See into a net exporter of clean power.
• Total Project Valuation: €100 million / ~$117 million
• Target Power Capacity: 80 MW to 90 MW peak output
• Site Footprint: 450 hectares at Santa Maria di Galeria, Rome
• Estimated Execution Timeline: 18 to 24 months for permitting and construction
• Operational Scope: Powers Vatican City (108 acres), Vatican Radio transmission centers, and affiliated entities like Bambino Gesù Hospital
• Annual Carbon Reduction: Offsets approximately 40,000 to 50,000 metric tons of CO2 annually by replacing grid electricity
• Funding & Investment Model: Financed directly through Vatican Treasury capital allocation alongside green investment structures, avoiding reliance on Italian national solar subsidies
• Storage Integration: Outfitted with BESS to buffer power intermittency and provide overnight electricity
The initiative operationalizes the papal apostolic letter Fratello Sole (Brother Sun), which called for transitioning the Holy See to a net-zero emission model. Vatican City, the world’s smallest independent nation covering 108 acres with fewer than 900 residents, possesses limited room for utility-scale infrastructure. Consequently, the Holy See is leveraging its extraterritorial site at Santa Maria di Galeria, which has housed Vatican Radio’s primary shortwave transmission equipment since the 1950s.
Progress accelerated following Italy’s ratification of a key bilateral treaty governing administrative and infrastructural development at the site. A joint Italian-Vatican commission convened earlier this month to initiate regulatory alignment and project staging. Because the installation operates as an extraterritorial asset of a foreign sovereign state, the project will proceed without relying on Italian national residential or commercial solar subsidies.
• Pope Francis (Apostolic Letter Fratello Sole):
“We need to make a transition towards a sustainable development model that reduces greenhouse gas emissions into the atmosphere, setting a goal of climate neutrality. Humanity has the technological means necessary to face this environmental transformation.”
• Joint Italian-Vatican Commission Strategic Briefing:
“Combining agricultural production with high-yield photovoltaic systems allows us to respect the ecological integrity of the land while securing total energy independence for the Holy See’s operations.”
Upon completion, the project establishes a high-visibility framework for sovereign decarbonization. By converting 450 hectares of land into a dual-purpose agricultural and power-generation hub, the Vatican demonstrates how small sovereign states can overcome spatial limitations to achieve 100% renewable self-sufficiency. Beyond its operational benefits, the $117 million facility serves as a practical execution of global climate governance standards, aligning religious institutions with broader international net-zero mandates.
ESG News.earth is India’s first Sustainability & ESG news portal.

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Should Solar Panel Recycling Be Mandated?  RAND
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FOND DU LAC (NBC 26) — 240 new solar panels now sit atop the roof of the Fond du Lac Public Library, helping generate about a quarter of the library’s daily electricity.
Library director Rachel Fuller says the project has been in the works for years.
“The project went out to bid in 2024,” Fuller said. “Installation began in 2025 and we launched in August of 2026.”
Fuller says the process has been a collaboration with the city of Fond du Lac and individual donors.
The project itself will produce a size-able amount of electricity which will power 25 percent of the library’s daily electric needs.
WATCH JACK PORTER’S FULL BROADCAST STORY HERE:
“The panels will produce around 400 kilowatt hours per day,” Fuller said. “However we are very pleased that the solar panels having been doing better than that.”
For comparison, the average U.S household uses around 30 kilowatt-hours per day, according to the U.S Energy Information Administration.
Ian Stepleton also works for the library and says the net savings per year compared to paying for electricity is around $22,000 per year.
“This gives us a chance to save money,” Stepleton said. “Which means we can spend more on things that people really want to be able to use. Like borrowing books, using our databases, and being able to stream movies.”
Derek Juniatis lives in Fond du Lac and says he is happy to see the city and the library invest in something that he says will continue to give back.
“I think it’s sweet that they have solar panel here,” Juniatis said. “Using the renewable energy that we have.”
Most library-goers say they are interested in seeing what new offerings or resources will be available with the money that is being saved with the solar panels.
We cover stories making an impact in Fond du Lac. This is your home to stay on top of what is changing in Fond du Lac and why it matters to you and your family. We want to hear from you! Click here and tell us what we should be covering in your neighborhood.

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Welink Energy Portugal 2 UK Limited, the UK-based company that controls the Solara4 photovoltaic plant in Alcoutim, southern Portugal, has entered administration after lower-than-expected generation, depressed wholesale electricity prices, and technical issues affected the project’s revenue and cash flow.
The special-purpose vehicle, owned by British renewable energy developer Welink Energy, entered administration on 11 June 2026, according to a document filed with the UK’s official Companies House register.
The 220 MW facility has been operational since 2021 and was Portugal’s largest solar plant when it entered operation.
According to a report cited by Portuguese media, Solara4 has consistently generated less electricity than initially forecast. The difficulties have coincided with a significant expansion of solar capacity across the Iberian electricity market, contributing to lower wholesale power prices during periods of high solar generation and putting further pressure on the project’s revenues.
Solara4 was developed as one of Portugal’s first large-scale solar projects without a guaranteed regulated tariff, leaving its business model more exposed to wholesale electricity market conditions. The project consists of 661,500 solar modules spread across approximately 320 hectares of non-contiguous land. Its original design envisaged annual electricity generation of around 382 GWh.
In addition to market pressures, technical issues and fires have resulted in periods of downtime and higher maintenance costs. The plant is also involved in a legal dispute with China Triumph International Engineering (CTIEC), which was responsible for its construction. In proceedings before the High Court last July, CTIEC claimed £17.2 million (€20 million) from the WeLink group over outstanding debts related to solar projects.
The project also has exposure of around €64 million involving Investec and Kommunalkredit Austria, which have been identified as its principal creditors.
The insolvency proceedings do not necessarily mean that the plant will cease operations. The stated objective is to improve the asset’s operational performance and prepare it for a potential sale to new investors.
Management of the project has shifted from Welink Investments to Exus. Exus, together with Enertis, is expected to assess the investment required to restore and increase the plant’s electricity generation.
The project’s future could also include hybridization with wind generation and battery energy storage. The wind component, however, remains subject to a decision by the Portuguese Environment Agency.
Solara4’s insolvency has also prompted debate over the conditions under which large-scale solar projects were developed in Portugal.
Some social media users have linked the case to Portugal’s 2019 solar auctions, which produced record-low bids, including a price of €14.76/MWh. However, that comparison does not directly apply to Solara4, which was developed as a merchant project rather than under a subsidized or guaranteed tariff.
João Galamba, Portugal’s former secretary of state for energy, has rejected the connection with the auctions. In a social media post, he instead pointed to delays in the project’s administrative procedures, saying that a licensing process had started in 2023.

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Our special edition for Intersolar South America 2026 is here!
Discover the latest insights into the Brazilian solar market – in Portuguese.
Entries open in seven categories: Modules, Inverters, BoS, BESS, Manufacturing, Sustainability, Projects.
April 01 – August 31, 2026
A two-day conference in Austin, Texas, bringing together leaders in US solar manufacturing, equipment specification, and factory execution.
Saudi Arabia is accelerating its clean energy transition—join the SunRise Arabia Clean Energy Conference 2026 in Riyadh to explore how solar PV and energy storage are powering its digital economy.
Thursday, August 27, 2026
5:30 am – 6:30 am CEST, Berlin, Paris, Madrid
pv magazine USA hosts its third multi-day virtual event on advancing U.S. solar and energy storage markets, covering financing, supply chains, and distributed energy’s role in grid resilience.
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Beacon Fen Energy Park has secured planning approval through the UK government’s nationally significant infrastructure project (NSIP) pipeline, paving the way for construction at one of the largest co-located solar and battery energy storage system (BESS) assets in the country.
The project developed by Low Carbon is planned as a 400 MW solar plant sharing a grid connection with a BESS rated for 600 MW power output. Construction is expected to begin at the transmission connected project in 2027 according to the project website. pv magazine understands full commissioning is viewed as likely to take place in the early 2030s.
Located on the east of Sleaford, England, Beacon Fen Energy Park has a grid connection in excess of its planned installed solar capacity, with a higher power output from the co-located BESS asset.
Gird operator NESO‘ transmission entry capacity (TEC) register records a 600 MW connection for the Beacon Fen Energy Park project at the Bicker Fen 400 kV substation, as well as a 400 MW connection for the Heckington Fen Solar Park, a nearby co-located solar and storage project approved by the UK government in January 2025.
The project will connect to the same substation at the Viking Link, the world’s longest onshore and subsea HVDC interconnector stretching 765 km from the United Kingdom to Denmark.
In a press release, Mike Rutgers, managing director of UK development, described securing a development consent order as a “landmark moment” for Low Carbon and noted it was the first major energy structure taken under the new secretary of state.
Planning approval for Beacon Fen was granted by the Department for Energy Security and Net Zero (DESNZ) secretary of state, Miatta Fahnbulleh. Energy generating projects in England with capacity greater than 100 MW are assessed by the UK Planning Inspectorate before the final approval decision is made by central government.
Fahnbulleh’s predecessor markedly increased the pace of large-scale solar planning approvals since the last UK general election in July 2024, and the approval of another major co-located project following a change in Prime Minister in July 2026 suggests continued support for utility-scale solar deployment at the top of DESNZ.
Solar Energy UK CEO Chris Hewett told pv magazine in June that the industry association did not expect a change of approach on grid-scale solar approvals from the government, which had largely stalled before 2024. The UK government now has until Sept. 10 to decide on its next major solar project approval, the 840 MW Botley West Solar Farm.
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Our special edition for Intersolar South America 2026 is here!
Discover the latest insights into the Brazilian solar market – in Portuguese.
Entries open in seven categories: Modules, Inverters, BoS, BESS, Manufacturing, Sustainability, Projects.
April 01 – August 31, 2026
A two-day conference in Austin, Texas, bringing together leaders in US solar manufacturing, equipment specification, and factory execution.
Saudi Arabia is accelerating its clean energy transition—join the SunRise Arabia Clean Energy Conference 2026 in Riyadh to explore how solar PV and energy storage are powering its digital economy.
Thursday, August 27, 2026
5:30 am – 6:30 am CEST, Berlin, Paris, Madrid
pv magazine USA hosts its third multi-day virtual event on advancing U.S. solar and energy storage markets, covering financing, supply chains, and distributed energy’s role in grid resilience.
Thursday, October 7, 2026
11:00 am – 12:30 pm CEST, Berlin, Paris, Madrid

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TUBAS, August 25, 2026 (WAFA) – Colonists on Tuesday evening damaged solar panels in the Al-Tha’la area east of the town of Tammun, south of Tubas, cutting off electricity to three Palestinian families.
Mutaz Basharat, an official monitoring colonization activities in the Tubas Governorate, said that colonists damaged the solar panels supplying electricity to three families living in the area, leaving them without electricity.
T.R.
All Rights Reserved to WAFA © 2020
All Rights Reserved to Wafa
WAFA © 2020

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TEHRAN, Aug. 25 (MNA) – President Masoud Pezeshkian has pledged full support for investors and domestic manufacturers of solar panels, saying there will be no restrictions on backing investment in that field.
He made the remarks on Tuesday during a ceremony to inaugurate two solar power plants with a combined capacity of 95 megawatts in Tehran Province.
Pezeshkian thanked domestic and foreign engineers and contractors involved in solar panel projects, saying that the measures taken to expand the use of clean and renewable energy could be further developed and will hit new records high.
He said the administration expects to generate 30,000 megawatts of electricity from clean and renewable sources within the next two years.
The president further said electricity supplies to industrial units should never be cut off, emphasizing the importance of reliable power for production.
MNA
کپی شد
© 2017 Mehr News Agency. All rights reserved

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Flex2Future, a Norwegian technology company developing floating offshore energy systems that combine wind, wave and solar power on a single platform, has wrapped up an extensive model testing campaign in Norway, putting its floating wave, wind, and solar energy platform concept through simulated offshore conditions ahead of plans for a full-scale demonstration before the decade ends.

Flex2Future completed an extensive model test campaign in April 2026 at facilities operated by SINTEF Ocean, part of the Norwegian independent research organisation SINTEF, in Trondheim, Norway. The tests were carried out on a 1:25 scale model across two complementary campaigns.
The Norwegian firm explains that the complete module, including a fully modelled mooring system, was tested in the Ocean Basin under combined waves, current, and wind to characterise the structure’s dynamic behaviour.
In addition, a representative corner section was tested in the Towing Tank across a range of wave conditions to study the concept’s wave energy conversion. The testing program verified movements, survivability, and energy production in line with numerical models.
The company emphasized: “The campaign provides valuable measurement data that will be used to validate and calibrate Flex2Future’s numerical models, laying a solid foundation for continued development toward full scale.”

According to SINTEF, the project was initiated to support the development of offshore renewable energy concepts capable of producing electricity from multiple energy sources at the same time to support the green transition.
As the concept combines wave energy converters, a floating wind turbine, and solar panels into one floating offshore platform, the system aims to increase energy production while reducing the cost per produced kWh.
SINTEF elaborated: “The project is highly relevant because there is a growing need for stable and sustainable energy production to support the green transition and reduce greenhouse gas emissions. The project addresses several technical challenges related to floating offshore structures. The platform must withstand large waves, strong winds, and harsh sea conditions while maintaining stable operation and efficient power production.
“Another challenge is understanding how the combined system behaves dynamically in realistic offshore conditions and how energy can efficiently be extracted from the wave energy converters. Numerical simulations alone are not sufficient to predict all hydrodynamic effects and structural responses.”
The scale model tests were performed in the Ocean Basin and Towing Tank laboratories in Trondheim using realistic wave, wind, and current conditions. Hybrid testing combined physical models with real-time numerical models and motor-controlled systems to reproduce realistic offshore loads and power take-off behaviour.

The Norwegian research organization underlines that measurements from sensors, cameras, wave probes, and force transducers were used to validate numerical models and evaluate system performance, motions, mooring loads, and power production capabilities.
At full scale, each module measures 136 × 136 meters and is designed for an average output of around 8 MW, based on Flex2Future’s data. The company is seeking approval to place its S1 pilot offshore Eigerøy as part of its plans to bring the technology to the ocean before 2030.
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Share this article Flex2Future, a Norwegian technology company developing floating offshore energy systems that combine wind, wave and solar power on a single platform, has wrapped up an extensive model testing campaign in Norway, putting its floating wave, wind, and solar energy platform concept through simulated offshore conditions ahead of plans for a full-scale demonstration […]

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Machine Learning Narrows Half a Million Perovskites to 38 Solar Candidates  AZoM
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Daily Kos Community
This content is not subject to review by Daily Kos staff prior to publication.
Albert Einstein won his sole Nobel Prize for his 1905 paper explaining the photoelectric effect, thus making quantum theory real. The effect had been known since 1839, but was entirely mysterious back then. It took quite a while for Einstein’s science to turn into technology in light meters (1932), cameras (1969), digital telescopes (1969), and solar cells (patented in 1946, demonstrated in 1954), but more than a century later, here we are at the third terawatt of solar power. Now, we need at least 11 TW of renewable power to catch up with current demand, and we will need more as we wipe out poverty and oppression, and pass Net Zero on our way to going sufficiently Carbon Negative to start cooling the planet. And we still won’t be done at that point. It appears that we can reach 8 TW by 2030, and catch up with ourselves a few years after that. I’m 80 years old this year, so I have a decent actuarial chance of still being with you then. Perhaps we will find someone to take over this work, too.
It took nearly 7 decades, after invention of the silicon solar cell in 1954, for the world to install 1 terawatt of solar capacity, enough to power entire USAAfter passing that milestone in 2022, world added its second terawatt in 2024 and its third in 2026e360.yale.edu/digest/three…
The First Green Terawatt Was the Hardest
March 12, 2019
This story is about wind and solar combined. Today’s story is about 3 TW of solar ALONE.
The MSM won’t tell you, but last year the world reached one terawatt of renewable energy capacity. I only just now found out while searching for something else. I checked, and it hasn’t been in any Daily Kos Diary either.
We need something like 16 TW worldwide. More for EVs and economic growth in the poorest countries, less with improved efficiency and conservation, and so on.
As the hook to 3 Ways to Invest in a Renewable Energy Future (out of date on details), The Motley Fool investment site stated:
According to Bloomberg New Energy Finance (BNEF), global capacity for solar and wind power generation has exceeded 1 terawatt. And it won’t be long before we celebrate the next terawatt. BNEF estimates that the second terawatt of generating capacity will be installed in 2023 at a cost 46% lower than the first.
Date in 2027 not yet set
The initiative grew from frustration with the annual United Nations climate summits or Cops, where all agreements must be unanimous, and the main fossil fuel producing and fossil fuel dependent countries repeatedly block progress.
Ireland has been announced as co-host for next year’s sequel to the world’s first Conference on Transitioning Away from Fossil Fuels.
Announcement comes as 60 countries agree landmark move to phase out oil, gas and coal.
The 2026 climate event guide
Our ongoing list of this year’s global environmental conferences, summits and more
Far too many to list here, but these are of critical importance.
When: 9–20 November 2026
Where: Antalya, Turkey
The largest climate event of 2026 will be hosted by Turkey in the resort city of Antalya, with Australia leading the negotiations as part of an agreement between the two countries. There will also be a ‘pre-COP’ held in a Pacific island country, though the dates and host country have yet to be confirmed.
COP31 will build on the deal agreed at COP30 in 2025, which included a tripling of adaptation finance and a just transition mechanism, as well as “roadmaps” to transition away from fossil fuels and to halt and reverse deforestation by 2030.
When: 17–28 August 2026
Where: Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia
The UNCCD COP17 will bring together the 197 Parties to the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD) to accelerate action against desertification, land degradation and drought.
As one of the most affected countries by desertification, with nearly 77 percent of its land degraded, Mongolia will leverage COP17 to drive solutions for land restoration, sustainable land management and resilience-building across the world.
I'm attending a @theactionnetwork.bsky.social event: Data Centers & the Elections. RSVP here: actionnetwork.org/events/data-…
For the first time, solar power was Portugal’s main source of electricity in July.
South Africa’s Constitutional Court has permanently halted Shell and Impact Africa’s controversial oil and gas exploration off the pristine Wild Coast. HUGE!
A new study shows that across the globe, solar energy is projected to supply about 61% of the world’s electricity by 2050. Also, the world just passed a huge solar milestone: three trillion watts of power.
New Mexico’s clean-energy transition is emerging as a success story in a state long associated with fossil-fuel production. In just five years, solar, wind, and batteries overtook fossil fuels. And electricity prices remained cheaper than average.
Roosevelt Institute Roosevelt Institute: Building Up in 2029: How to Make Green Statecraft Durable
How can the United States build climate policy that lasts? Across 17 essays, 19 scholars and practitioners offer a 2029 agenda for durable green statecraft—from governing and planning to financing and producing the next phase of the energy transition.
Rewilding/rewetting is one of our best tools to combat climate change #ClimateChange #PeatlandRestorationwww.theguardian.com/environment/…
Increased rainfall and storms to hit UK due to biggest El Niño for a century, says Met Officehttps://www.theguardian.com/environment/2026/aug/21/increased-rainfall-and-storms-to-hit-uk-due-to-biggest-el-nino-for-a-century-say-met-office‘Unprecedented’ weather pattern over Pacific Ocean to be […]
Climate change threatens the future of cocoa.A study of 282 Ghanaian cocoa farmers found declining yields, rising pest and disease pressure, and tree losses linked to climate change.🌱 The findings highlight the need for climate-resilient agriculture.#ClimateChange #Agriculture #FoodSecurity
“Climate Change Fuels Expansion of Disease-Carrying Insects” — Devdiscourse#EnvironmentalNews #ClimateChange #Climate
#ElNino is not a new phenomenon, but the amplification by #ClimateChange and #GlobalWarming seems to be appearing.And the impact on the Panama Canal, reducing the number of ships it can handle, will only add to the cost of shipping, and so #Inflation.This economic impact brought to US […]
🔴 Top storyAlberta records first August day without wildfires in forty yearsAlberta recorded its first day in forty years without any active wildfires during the month of August.📰 Edmonton Journal#ClimateChange #cdnpoli
New ‘living seawall’ habitat in Boston is already teeming with life.The nonprofit Boston Harbor Now added concrete panels to seawalls that mimic rocky tidal habitats. #ClimateChange #GlobalWarmingyaleclimateconnections.org/2026/08/new-…
Otter spotted for first time in 100 years in New York City’s Bronx River.Image captured in early June shows animal foraging in the waterway in first since early 1900s, signaling its recovery. #ClimateChange #GlobalWarmingwww.theguardian.com/us-news/2026…
Dutch Pension Fund Pulls Nearly Half a Billion Euros From Climate ‘Megapolluter’ BlackRock.“This is a massive win for Dutch pensioners—not to mention all living creatures on Earth.” #ClimateChange #GlobalWarmingwww.commondreams.org/news/blackro…
insideevs.com/news/805634/…
Oh, yes? Did the survey ask about heat pumps?
Germany hits 128 GW Peak of Solar Energy 6 Months Early, 20% of Gridhttps://www.byteseu.com/2302527/By Edgar Meza | – ( Clean Energy Wire ) – Germany has reached a major milestone in the expansion of solar energy, with nationwide installed photovoltaic (PV) capacity surpassing the …
The former teacher estimates he is saving more than A$5,000 a year after installing a 10.5-kilowatt rooftop solar system and a 13.5 kilowatt-hour battery at his suburban home. The solar panels and battery easily meet most of the electricity needs for his home and electric vehicle (EV).
“In addition to manufacturing solar modules, Translucent has also developed a transportable, containerized microgrid portfolio under the brand name TAU. The solar modules come assembled onto a platform that unfolds…”
Ohio Supreme Court allows certification of out-of-state wind farms ohiocapitaljournal.com/2026/08/21/o…
How this works for those interested:24 kWh battery (zero interest loan from NSW Gov)Electric car (federal tax incentives for EV leasing)Heat pump water heater (NSW Gov program)Globird Four4Free plan – free power from 11AM-3PMBattery and car charge during the day, carries us through all night.
⚡ Red States Are Killin' It With Their Solar Factories📰 via cleantechnica#PowerGrid #Energy
PJM Weighs New Surplus Interconnection Path to Bring Batteries and Generation Online Faster->Microgrid Media | More on "Grid interconnection for renewable energy" at BigEarthData.ai | #Batteries #RenewableEnergy
World’s largest cattle station installs microgrid as primary power source" at http://www.pv-magazine.com/2026/08/07/w…
New York City is building high-rises and skyscrapers that heat and cool themselves with geothermal energy and heat pumps–NO FOSSIL FUELS NEEDED!#cleanenergy
An accidental breakthrough in Iceland revealed how to tap into magma itself, potentially unlocking geothermal energy at scales previously thought impossible (@spacedaily.com)Main Link | Discussion
An accidental breakthrough in Iceland reveals how to tap into magma itself, potentially unlocking geothermal energy at scales previously thought impossible.
Imagine how quickly we could totally electrify Australia with renewables, batteries and electrical appliances (including retrofits) if we weren’t paying half a trillion dollars for the dumb, dud AUKUS deal?!And liberate ourselves from the tyranny of fossil fuels forever.
The online sales platform, CATL Mall, claims to offer extensive cell warranties and guarantees, even for small B2B buyers.
Did you know?Wind is moving forward again as part of America’s clean-energy future.Every property deserves the most cost-effective path.Upload your current utility bill→https://sunshineisfree.money/v🎁 $100 Voucher After Proposal Review#SunshineIsFree #WindPower #CleanEnergy
🌋 Underwater Volcanoes Are Geothermal Energy’s Next Frontier📰 via oilprice#Geothermal #Energy
#mwgic #2026 #Power #Storage #Energy #Thermal #Photovoltaic #BESS #Battery #Heatwww.autonocion.com/us/graphite-…
Nanolope Raises €800K to Turn Buildings Into Thermal Batteries techlensmedia.com/news/nanolop…#ClimateTech #EnergyStorage #PropTech #BuildingTech #TechLensMedia
youtube.com/watch?v=3Z0H…
Temporary excise tax cuts undermine the greening of Ireland’s transport
The War in Iran has as Trump stated entred into the Economic D-Day phrase Buffalo Niagara airport has run out of fuel
Republicans are pushing to cut health care funding to pay for a $200 billion war. They already cut $1 trillion from Medicaid and SNAP. This will only get worse as the Iran war drags onAdd your name in 30 seconds. Tell Congress: Fund health care, not war!www.facebook.com/share/r/1C7C…
• Mohsen Rezaei, Secretary of Iran's Supreme National Security Council (SNSC), warned that Iran would consider any country supporting the new US economic measures an 'act of war.' He also threatened to shut down all oil exports from the Gulf if the 'economic war continues.'
#Abraham Lincoln #ICE #immigration #Iran #Lincoln #war #water🌐 http://www.newsmart.ch
Byron Donalds says Trump ‘did not break that promise’ to keep prices down amid Iran warRep. Donalds (R-Fla.) joins Meet the Press NOW to discuss his recent win in the GOP gubernatorial primary and weighs in on Trump’s impact on the economy.NBC News: apple.news/AaDGIPADCQ-G…😡MAGA DELUSIONIST

Singapore inflation hits highest in nearly two years, but undershoots expectations
Singapore inflation missed estimates even as it accelerated to a near two-year high in July, as higher energy prices due to the Iran war lifted electricity prices.
The city-state reported that consumer prices rose 2.2% last month, year on year, compared with the 2.3% expected by economists polled by Reuters, and the 1.9% rise seen in June. Consumer price index fell 0.2% on a month-on-month basis.

The new measures will add to an extensive sanctions regime already targeting Iran’s banking, energy, aviation and cryptocurrency sectors. The Trump administration has claimed that Iran’s economy is in freefall, with runaway inflation and a collapsing currency.
Bessent also warned that “any nation that serves as a financial artery of a withering regime should expect to share in its isolation” — language aimed squarely at foreign governments still transacting with Tehran. He has previously warned of further secondary sanctions on nations and entities that conduct business with Iran.
Iran has responded by warning Gulf neighbors against joining U.S. economic measures and tightening its grip on the chokepoint, through which roughly a fifth of the world’s seaborne oil passed before the war.
On Saturday, Mohsen Rezaei, a longtime military commander who became the new secretary of Iran’s Supreme National Security Council earlier this month, vowed to target the interests of oil-rich neighbors if they joined U.S. efforts to further isolate Iran.
#stayinformedcc Prepare now: We are witnessing abrupt climate change #climatechange #ClimateCrisis #ClimateReport #ClimateAction #climateemergency #heatwaves #wildfires #drought #floods #Hurricane #TropicalStorm #globalwarming http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/202…
This is an important message from Sadiq Khan, we all need to accept our future will include increasingly hot summers due to #climatechange. #ClimateAction is needed now to cope with this new reality.
It seems that almost every time it rains lately, this happens. By the way, the DOGE cuts to the weather service do not make this easier: http://www.yahoo.com/news/weather… #Rain #NewYorkCityRain #ClimateChange #DOGE #WeatherService
Filipino Cacao Growers Learn to Live With a Hotter Climate.Cacao growers in the Philippines are developing new techniques to protect their crops from increasingly harsh conditions. #ClimateChange #GlobalWarminge360.yale.edu/features/202…
Extreme Temperatures Around the World@extremetemps.bsky.socialRECORD HEAT IN THE BALKANSBoth Western and Eastern Europe are again with record heat !Today it was scorching hot also in The Balkans,locally >40C.In Particular, the BOSNIA town of Gradacac […] [Original post on mstdn.social]
Heatwave in France: 2026 sets record for rockfalls in the Alps.The summer of 2026 saw an unprecedented wave of landslides in the French Alps, especially around Mont Blanc, driven by extreme heat and thawing permafrost. #ClimateChange #GlobalWarmingwww.euronews.com/2026/08/20/h…
substack.com/@contrarian/…
Do this for CA @governor.ca.gov just like @joshshapiropa.bsky.social did for PA.“Effective immediately, PA is requiring AI data centers to commit to strict environmental & transparency requirements AND receive approval from the local community if they want to have their permits reviewed". EO#2026-05
Today's read: Starcloud Raises $250 Million to Expand Orbital Computing and Data Centers 📣🔗 Read the full story at ift.tt/1BarcNyNever miss a beat in telecoms. Catch the latest news on @TheFastMode 🚀 #tech #technews #telecoms
youtube.com/shorts/BkK1P…
'Have Your Friend Elon Build One at Mar-a-Lago,' Says Sanders After Trump Comments on Data Centers http://www.commondreams.org/news/data-ce…
What’s True
The Nevada-based power supplier for California’s Lake Tahoe region, NV Energy, has said it can no longer supply Liberty Utilities, the electric utility that serves communities in the area, because of strains from data centers in Nevada.
What’s False
Liberty Utilities does not plan on stopping service for customers. As of this writing, the two companies have agreed that NV Energy will continue to supply Liberty Utilities until the latter company finds a new energy supplier.
The Data Center Backlash Bursts Into the Midterms http://www.nytimes.com/2026/08/23/u…
📰 Toronto StarAI data centres consume vast amounts of electricity and water, potentially worsening the climate crisis.#ClimateChange #cdnpoli
Rosatom is building 28 reactors abroad and negotiating 50 more #Rosatom #NuclearEnergy #EnergyInfrastructure #ReactorTechnology #InternationalTrade
by KFF
For decades, the White Mesa Mill has sparked debate over whether radioactive contamination threatens human health by getting into the water and the air. Concerns run especially deep in the White Mesa Ute Community.
Hitachi Stock and Other Nuclear Energy Picks Tied to Germany’s Power Demandhttps://www.byteseu.com/2301952/Germany’s role as a growth engine for Eurozone manufacturing puts reliable, large scale power squarely in the spotlight, and that is where nuclear energy stocks come into focus. Stronger …
Pangasinan green group opposes Marcos Jr.’s pro-nuclear stanceWill nuclear energy production help in energy security?The post Pangasinan green group opposes Marcos Jr.’s pro-nuclear stance appeared first on Bulatlat […]
#BO-O-O-O-OGUS!!!#NoNewNukesOverpriced nuclear power taking far too long to build contributes less than nothing to the clean power transition.Uranium mining kills miners, and the reactors leave toxic waste behind.
India’s 100 GW Nuclear Push via Homegrown Reactorshttps://www.byteseu.com/2301641/The Current Gap Is Big Nuclear power supplies about 3% of India‘s electricity, a small piece of the energy mix right now. The country has 8.8 gigawatts of nuclear capacity installed, which is just a sliver of …
⚠️ KANSAS, PAY ATTENTION: Parsons could become a major U.S. AI and energy hub. Data centers, advanced manufacturing and even an underground nuclear reactor are being explored. This could mean jobs and investment—but also major energy, water and infrastructure decisions. 🌻⚡🤖
#BO-O-O-O-OGUS!!!.#NoNewNukesWind and Solar and High Voltage DC power lines are China's keys for transitioning to a fully renewable grid.Nukes kill uranium miners, cost too much, take much too long to build, and leave toxic waste behind.
#BO-O-O-O-OGUS!!!#NoNewNukesApollo Atomics promises its first demonstrator SMR for 2027. I don't believe a word of it.www.nrc.gov/reactors/new…"The U.S. NRC is currently engaged in pre-application activities with Apollo Atomics regarding a construction permit application."
Home battery installations are growing despite the Trump administration’s eliminating the tax credits for them.
📰 Globe and MailEnergy analysts doubt Donald Trump's plan to revive the Keystone XL pipeline because shifting oil markets and new transport options have made the project obsolete.#ClimateChange #cdnpoli
How Florida quietly removed climate change content from textbooks.Publishers bent to state requests watering down information on climate change’s impact. Now the state has turned to updating its science standards. #ClimateChange #GlobalWarminggrist.org/politics/how…
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez asks former Exxon scientists about oil giant’s climate change denial
Climate change denial comes in many forms.As we cross the global warming level of 1.5°C with record high global CO₂ emissions, it's not physically possible to limt global warming at this level.Some seem to think that 'physically' means 'in fairyland'.
Call to action 8/31 Tell the NRC NO! They are loosening radiation exposure levels for workers and the public. We may disagree on nuclear, but we are all equally affected by radiation exposures. Because of our shared humanity we must take this seriously. http://www.protectbetter.org/nrc-comments #nuclear
#BO-O-O-O-OGUS!!!.#NoNewNukesWind and Solar and High Voltage DC power lines are China's keys for transitioning to a fully renewable grid.Nukes kill uranium miners, cost too much, take much too long to build, and leave toxic waste behind.
• Also trackedCanadian government repeals electric vehicle sales mandateThe federal government is formally repealing the electric vehicle sales mandate that targeted full electrification of new vehicles by 2035.📰 Toronto Star#ClimateChange #cdnpoli
What Trump said are the well-worn and often rebutted lies of the fossil fuel lobby, whose lies are the greatest con job ever perpetrated on the world.If you hear such climate science denial tropes, the answers to all of those can be found at skepticalscience.com
Alberta moves to stop data centres from using renewable energy
Alberta’s grid operator is proposing rules that effectively block large new data centres from relying on solar or wind power.
By requiring facilities over 75 megawatts to source continuous, weather-independent baseload power, the policy makes standalone renewables economically unviable, pushing tech developers toward natural gas generation to support the province’s fossil fuel market.
The Alberta Electric System Operator classifies thermal gas generation as the only reliable option for constant power surges, dismissing wind, solar, and battery hybrids as inadequate.
Premier Danielle Smith promotes the data centre strategy as “digital refineries” designed to consume local natural gas reserves. 
Just as though they were bought off by the oil and gas industry.
AI data centres are turning Alberta energy into something the whole world is lining up to buy. This site explains what they are, why they are being built here, and how Alberta’s rules protect the things that matter: your power bill, your water, your community and your wallet.
Alberta produces about 60 per cent of Canada’s natural gas. A data centre refines that gas, in stages, into the most valuable commodity of our time. Gas becomes electricity. Electricity becomes computing power. Computing power becomes intelligence: the answers, predictions and tools the world is buying.
Then the product ships through fibre optic cable, at the speed of light. A digital pipeline that crosses borders without a decade of regulatory battles, carries the finished product instead of the raw one, and never sells at a discount.
🎩 GoodNewsRoundup
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A two-year apartment pilot in Bucharest uses semi-transparent photovoltaic windows to heat domestic water directly in DC, turning an ordinary water tank into thermal storage without a solar inverter or battery.
By Adrian Băisan, PhotoVoltaic Windows SRL
For people living in apartment buildings, using solar energy is not as straightforward as it is for homeowners who have access to their own roofs.
Millions of apartment residents have no usable roof area of their own. In many cases, the only surfaces directly available to them are balconies, balustrades and windows.
Plug-in balcony photovoltaic systems have become an important response to this problem. But they also raise another question: what happens to the solar electricity when it is produced at a time when the apartment does not need it?
For more than two years, we have been testing a different approach in a real apartment in Bucharest, Romania.
Instead of feeding photovoltaic electricity into the apartment electrical installation, semi-transparent photovoltaic windows supply an ordinary electric water heater directly in DC.
The idea is simple: use the water heater itself as energy storage.
Solar electricity produced over several hours during the day is converted directly into heat and stored as hot water for use later.
There is no photovoltaic battery and no solar inverter between the photovoltaic glazing and the heating element. The PV side operates off-grid and does not inject electricity into the public grid.
When solar energy is insufficient, the controller switches the same water heater to the normal AC grid after sunset so that it can reach the thermostat setpoint.
The system is installed on a south-facing glazed balcony in Bucharest.
The photovoltaic glazing has a nominal installed capacity of approximately 845 Wp and supplies domestic hot water for a household of four people, with hot water used every day, including one shower per person per day.
Earlier project documentation used a nominal capacity of 683 Wp, based on the 2021 manufacturer data sheet available when the glazing was ordered in 2022. The manufacturer has since confirmed that the delivered glazing corresponds to newer, higher-power models. Recalculating the same 11-window configuration with the current data sheet gives approximately 845 Wp. This correction changes the nominal STC rating, but it does not change the measured energy delivered to the water heater or the measured hot-water coverage reported below.
We monitored the system over two consecutive October-to-September periods.
During 2023–2024, the photovoltaic windows supplied 446 kWh to the water heater and covered 46.7% of the household’s domestic hot water energy demand.
During 2024–2025, they supplied 462 kWh and covered 43.7% of the domestic hot water energy demand.
In both periods, the family was away for approximately one month, meaning that each October-to-September measurement period effectively represents about 11 months of actual household use.
These results are important because the objective of the system is not maximum instantaneous photovoltaic output. The objective is to use as much of the available solar energy as possible inside the apartment.
The corrected PV nameplate rating also does not affect the separate water-saving and cooling analyses later in this article: the water calculation is based on measured flow and waiting time, while the cooling model is based on glazing area and solar-heat-gain characteristics rather than PV electrical nameplate power.
Germany’s Umweltbundesamt, or UBA — the German Environment Agency, Germany’s federal environmental authority — provides an interesting reference point.
For a south-facing, vertically mounted 800 W plug-in balcony photovoltaic system, UBA estimates annual production of approximately 532 kWh. It also estimates that, without a battery, around 240 kWh per year — approximately 45% — may be consumed directly in the apartment.
The reason is easy to understand.
A conventional plug-in photovoltaic system supplies whatever electrical loads happen to be operating at the same moment the sun is producing electricity.
If the photovoltaic system is producing 500 W while the apartment is using only 150 W, the household cannot simultaneously consume all 500 W unless another load starts, energy is stored, or the surplus is exported.
Our approach changes this relationship.
Instead of trying to make solar generation follow the apartment’s instantaneous electrical demand, we connect it to a load that can absorb energy over time.
A water heater is effectively a thermal battery.
It can receive 100 W, 300 W or 500 W over several hours, accumulate that energy as heat, and provide the stored hot water later in the day.
This allows solar production and actual use to occur at different times without an electrochemical battery.
There is another important part of the concept that is easy to overlook.
The system works particularly well not simply because photovoltaics are connected to a water heater, but because photovoltaic glazing can be a much better electrical match for direct-DC water heating than a typical one- or two-panel balcony PV system.
An electric water heater has a fixed resistive heating element.
Take, as an example, a standard 3 kW, 230 V water heater. The same electrical principle applies to water heaters with other rated powers; the 3 kW value is used here only as a clear comparison example.
If photovoltaic modules are connected directly to that heating resistance, without an inverter or active DC/DC MPPT converter, the operating point depends on the relationship between the PV array voltage and the resistance of the heating element.
This means that the wattage written on the photovoltaic module is not automatically the wattage that reaches the heater.
Consider two conventional modern PV modules with a combined nominal capacity of approximately 800 Wp.
For the module characteristics used in our comparison, connecting those two modules directly to the heating element of a 3 kW, 230 V water heater results in a maximum transferred power of only around 300 W, despite the approximately 800 Wp nominal rating of the pair.
The exact figure depends on the current-voltage characteristics of the modules, but the underlying problem remains the same: two conventional modules operate at a DC voltage that is relatively low compared with the voltage required for a good match with the resistance of a conventional 230 V water heater.
Their nominal 800 W rating therefore cannot be used efficiently by simply connecting them directly to the heating element.
Our photovoltaic-window installation behaves differently.
Although the corrected nominal installed capacity is approximately 845 Wp, we have measured a peak of 499 W delivered directly to the water heater.
This does not mean photovoltaic glass is inherently more efficient than conventional crystalline-silicon modules. It means the electrical configuration is better suited to the load.
Instead of one or two relatively high-power modules operating at low voltage and high current, photovoltaic glazing provides a larger number of lower-power generating elements.
These can be connected electrically so that the array reaches a much more useful DC voltage while total installed power remains moderate.
Moderate power + suitable DC voltage + resistive heating + thermal storage.
That combination fits a resistive water-heating element particularly well.
An active MPPT converter could increase the instantaneous power transferred to the heater under some irradiance conditions by keeping the photovoltaic array closer to its exact maximum-power point.
However, the gain in instantaneous power would not translate one-for-one into additional useful annual energy. The water tank has finite thermal capacity, and once the thermostat setpoint is reached the heater stops accepting energy. Extra midday power can therefore make the tank reach its cut-off temperature earlier rather than increase annual self-consumption proportionally.
In our configuration, the photovoltaic array and the heating resistance are already sufficiently well matched that an active MPPT stage is not essential to achieve the design objective. Any additional useful gain also has to be weighed against the converter’s own consumption, conversion losses, added cost and added complexity.
The measured 499 W peak from an approximately 845 Wp photovoltaic-window system shows that useful power can already be transferred directly to the heater with a very simple architecture.
This is different from the two-conventional-panel example. With two conventional modules totaling around 800 Wp, the poorer voltage match with a 3 kW/230 V heating element makes active power conversion much more important if the objective is to extract something close to the modules’ available photovoltaic power.
Alternatively, several conventional modules can be connected in series to raise the array voltage.
But once several conventional high-power PV modules are installed, total available power becomes much larger. At that point, using an inverter and supplying multiple household electrical loads generally makes more sense than dedicating the whole array to one water heater.
That is why we see photovoltaic glazing and direct-DC water heating as a particularly natural combination.
Photovoltaic windows → direct DC → heating element → stored hot water.
Conventional balcony PV is an excellent solution and has helped make solar generation accessible to people who do not own a roof.
Nor are we saying that conventional modules cannot be used for direct-DC water heating. They can.
With enough modules in series, an appropriately selected heating resistance, or active DC/DC power electronics, conventional modules can also heat water efficiently.
The difference is that a typical balcony system consisting of one or two conventional high-power modules is not naturally matched to a standard 230 V water-heater element.
Photovoltaic glazing occupies a different electrical niche.
A façade or balcony can contain several photovoltaic glazing elements, providing the voltage needed for direct heating without simultaneously creating a multi-kilowatt PV array.
This makes the concept especially interesting for apartments.
The water tank also changes the way we should think about photovoltaic system sizing.
With a conventional electrical system, users often focus on reaching the highest possible instantaneous power.
For direct solar water heating, that is not necessarily desirable.
If a large PV array heats the tank completely by midday, additional production later in the day can no longer be used by that dedicated load.
A more moderate photovoltaic system can instead supply energy for many hours. The heater slowly accumulates that energy.
The important quantity is therefore not only peak watts, but useful kilowatt-hours stored during the day.
The Bucharest results illustrate this. The approximately 845 Wp photovoltaic-window system, with a measured peak of 499 W at the heater, supplied 446 kWh in the first monitored period and 462 kWh in the second.
That was enough to cover 46.7% and 43.7%, respectively, of the domestic hot water energy requirement of a four-person household.
The experiment also revealed another benefit that has little to do with photovoltaic efficiency.
Before using the local water heater, the apartment relied on centrally supplied domestic hot water.
As happens in many apartment buildings, residents had to let water run while waiting for sufficiently hot water to arrive at the shower.
In our Bucharest case study, a measurement showed a shower flow rate of 6.7 liters per minute and approximately five minutes to reach about 43°C in late September.
Based on this measurement and seasonally extrapolated waiting periods of approximately five to eight minutes, the case-study model estimated approximately 62.1 cubic meters of water per year flowing during the waiting periods for a household of four people taking one shower per person per day.
This is not a universal figure. Waiting times vary substantially depending on the building, pipe length, circulation system and operating conditions.
But the mechanism is universal.
If hot water is produced locally and stored only a short distance from the shower, the waiting time can become practically negligible.
In our case, the local 80-liter water heater therefore provides a benefit beyond solar energy: it substantially reduces water wasted while waiting for centralized hot water to arrive.
Photovoltaic windows have another characteristic that conventional opaque PV modules do not have when they are simply attached to a balcony.
They become part of the building envelope.
The same glazing that generates electricity also reduces solar radiation entering the apartment.
We separately modeled this effect for the Bucharest apartment.
The south-facing glazed façade has approximately 12.9 m² of glazing, including 7.92 m² of semi-transparent photovoltaic glass.
Under the assumptions used in the study, replacing conventional clear glazing with the photovoltaic glazing reduces the solar heat gain through the overall glazed façade by approximately 40%.
For the particular apartment and air-conditioning operating assumptions used in the model, this corresponds to an estimated reduction in cooling electricity consumption of approximately 433–481 kWh per summer, with a central value of about 457 kWh.
These figures are calculated estimates, not measured air-conditioning savings. The distinction is important.
Nevertheless, the calculation illustrates a major characteristic of building-integrated photovoltaics.
The glazing can produce electricity and reduce the cooling load at the same time.
For apartments with large south-, east- or west-facing glazed areas and significant summer overheating, this secondary benefit may be particularly relevant.
The roof is not the only place where a building receives solar radiation. Apartment façades receive it too.
Photovoltaic glazing can be integrated into fixed window sections, balcony enclosures or glazed balustrades.
It therefore makes use of surfaces that already have an architectural function.
This does not mean photovoltaic glazing is suitable for every façade. Orientation, shading, transparency, architectural appearance and economics all have to be considered.
But for apartments with significant sun-exposed glazing, the façade can become an energy-producing surface without requiring access to the roof.
And when that electricity is used locally for domestic hot water, the system does not need to depend on simultaneous household electricity consumption.
One of the objectives of our pilot was to avoid unnecessary components.
On the photovoltaic side there is no battery and no solar inverter. The photovoltaic electricity is used in DC directly by a resistive heating element.
When solar energy is insufficient, the controller automatically switches the heater to the AC grid after sunset so that it can reach the temperature set by the boiler thermostat.
The automatic switching concept between photovoltaic DC and AC grid supply has also been included in a Romanian patent application published by the Romanian State Office for Inventions and Trademarks.
But the most important part of the concept is simpler than the switching system itself.
It is the combination of a façade-integrated photovoltaic generator with suitable DC electrical characteristics, a simple resistive load, and inexpensive thermal storage that the household already needs every day.
Most discussions about residential photovoltaics still begin with the roof.
That works well for detached homes. For millions of people living in apartment buildings, it does not solve the problem.
Balcony solar has already shown that apartment residents want access to their own renewable generation.
The next question is how the limited solar surface available to them can be used most effectively.
Our Bucharest pilot suggests one possible approach.
Over two consecutive measurement periods, photovoltaic windows supplied 446 kWh and 462 kWh directly to domestic hot water, covering 46.7% and 43.7% of the household’s hot water energy demand.
The household consists of four people using hot water daily.
The same installation also provides solar shading, while local hot-water production can reduce water losses associated with waiting for centralized hot water.
Most importantly, the system demonstrates that photovoltaic electricity does not always have to be converted into AC, stored in a battery or exported to the grid before becoming useful.
Sometimes the most effective storage system is already inside the apartment.
It is a tank of water.
And for photovoltaic glazing, the combination of higher useful DC voltage, moderate power and thermal storage may make direct DC one of the most natural ways to use the electricity it generates.
The most valuable solar kilowatt-hour may not be the one produced by the largest system. It may be the one generated on the balcony, stored as hot water and used by the same family a few hours later.
Monthly measurements and detailed supporting calculations are available from the author on request.
CleanTechnica’s Comment Policy
CleanTechnica is committed to publishing a diversity of educated opinions on the clean energy transition. Want to submit a thought piece? Go to http://www.CleanTechnica.com/contact/
Letters to the Editor has 67 posts and counting. See all posts by Letters to the Editor

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You might have heard the term “balcony solar” in the news recently. These devices are relatively small solar panels that plug into a standard 110-volt outlet and supply power to the circuits they are attached to. The purpose of balcony solar is to provide a cost-effective way to reduce electricity consumption from the grid and, therefore, your electric bill.
During the European energy crisis triggered by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, balcony solar became a popular means of supplementing grid electricity in some countries, particularly Germany. Now with electricity rates climbing, balcony solar is getting a closer look in the U.S.
Balcony solar is not legal in most states for reasons explained below, but NH Senate Bill 540 was recently signed into law, permitting its use in the state once safety standards are set. Not everyone will benefit from balcony solar, but it is a great investment for those who can. Here’s what you need to know before deciding whether balcony solar is right for you.
Balcony solar – also called plug-in solar, plug-and-play solar, or mini solar – is designed to plug into a standard outdoor power outlet. It is available in many configurations, but common components include a solar panel that collects energy from the sun and a micro-inverter that converts DC power from the panel to AC.
Another device called a smart power meter, which might go by other names depending on the brand, does not come standard with every balcony solar product, but it should. It monitors electricity usage on the circuit to which the balcony solar unit is connected to prevent overloads. This is important because the power generated by balcony solar is hidden from your home’s circuit breakers, so they might not shut off when an overload occurs.
The risk of overloading circuits with balcony solar is significantly lower in Europe due to how homes are wired. In Germany, for example, electrical power is supplied to homes via a single 230V line. This allows greater loads on the wiring and explains why balcony solar has been more readily adopted in Europe.
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A single balcony solar unit will not offset electricity usage for your entire house. This is due to the way buildings are wired for electricity in the U.S. Most homes have two 120V lines that deliver electricity from the grid. Each of these lines is called a “phase.” Power generated from a balcony solar unit cannot go from one phase to another.
For this reason, it’s best to plug balcony solar into the phase with the higher electricity usage or, if it makes economic sense, use two units, one for each phase. Ask an electrician to identify the electrical loads on each phase if you can’t do so yourself.
Yes and no. SB540 legalizes balcony solar conditionally. State building and interconnection codes must first be updated to account for a national safety standard developed by Underwriters Laboratories. UL 3700 addresses the overload risk and ensures that solar micro-inverters shut off quickly during a grid disruption to protect line workers and prevent electric shock when units are unplugged.
UL 3700 was released in January 2026, but the certification process for micro-inverters takes 6 to 12 months. As of July, only one micro-inverter was UL 3700 certified.
Yes, if you are careful about choosing a brand and options that address the issues described above. This means buying a power meter and ensuring that the system complies with UL 3700.
SB540 limits balcony solar to 1,200 watts, even though systems twice that size are available. This is another safety trade-off. However, 800W is a more typical size. Expect to pay about $1,500 for an 800W system with a power meter.
As with rooftop solar, the answer here is, “It depends.” Weather, panel location and positioning, electricity demand, and other variables will affect the efficiency of balcony solar. Ideally, a balcony solar panel should face south, be angled to directly face the sun, and be free of shade.
Do not expect balcony solar to cover your entire electric bill. An 800W system in New Hampshire weather will produce between 2 and 3.6 kilowatt-hours of electricity a day, according to one estimate. That would save about $281 a year with a 5.3-year payback on the initial investment, based on current electricity rates.
You also will not receive net metering payments for excess electricity from the utility because the energy stays in your home.
No, balcony solar is not designed as a backup power source. You can use a battery to store excess electricity for use when the solar unit is not generating power, but this option could easily double the cost of an 800W system.
Yes, you should get your landlord’s permission before installing balcony solar. Explain what it is and the expectations regarding benefits and limitations. Your landlord will want to know where you will locate it, where you will plug it in, and what’s drawing electricity on that circuit. They will also likely have concerns about the location of the solar panels, including aesthetics and space requirements.
Balcony solar kits are readily available from major online retailers and manufacturers.  Popular brands include Anker, Craftstrom, EcoFlow, and Bluetti.
However, the kits sold today are not yet certified under state-mandated safety standards. Our advice: Be patient and wait for certified products and consumer guidance from the NH Department of Energy before plugging anything in.
In the meantime, make sure you have a practical location for the solar panel near an outdoor outlet on a circuit that will give you the most benefit from the system. That location might be on the ground, the side of the house, or, of course, a balcony.
Electricity rates are expected to rise for the foreseeable future, and balcony solar is one way to offset those costs. Just make sure that it’s practical for your situation and that you are willing to wait a few years for the investment to pay off.

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“We have a lot of talk about building new reactors — and not a lot of doing.”
Photo Credit: Getty Images
Facing rising power demand, Gov. Kathy Hochul wants New York to lean far more heavily on nuclear energy as a source of constant, cleaner electricity — and she is arguing that the shift could eventually help restrain power costs.
That ambition, though, could depend on as much as $24 billion in public subsidies.
According to the Times Union, Hochul is aiming to add 5 gigawatts of nuclear generating capacity in New York. That target is greater than the amount of nuclear capacity added nationwide over 30 years and, if achieved, would provide enough electricity for nearly 4 million homes.
State officials say the added nuclear power could serve several purposes at once: supporting economic growth, keeping the grid dependable and, over time, reducing pressure on utility bills. The New York State Energy Research and Development Authority estimates that a larger nuclear fleet could create about $50 billion in grid benefits by 2050, the Times Union reported.
Those potential benefits would come with a massive upfront cost. A state analysis found new reactors could need $15 billion to $24 billion in government subsidies, before any extra expenses that might be passed on to ratepayers if projects exceed their budgets.
Interest in nuclear energy has been rising among politicians in both parties as electricity use climbs, including from data centers. Federal tax credits and low-cost loans have also made new reactor projects appear more financially viable.
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A big part of nuclear power’s appeal is its steady output. Plants can generate large volumes of electricity around the clock without the planet-warming pollution produced by coal- and gas-fired plants, giving them a reliability role that wind and solar cannot always match because those sources depend on weather conditions.
But nuclear is also among the most expensive and slowest options for building a new power supply. Under Hochul’s proposal, the first new facility may not come online until 2039, which means it would do little to solve near-term affordability and reliability problems. Ongoing disputes over radioactive waste and the possibility of cost overruns also continue to drive public skepticism.
Rather than offering broad support for nuclear energy, New York has attached a specific buildout goal to the idea. That makes it different from many states that back nuclear expansion in theory without setting a clear construction target.
If the plan advances, New York would look to pair state support with federal incentives to finance and construct new reactors. Backers say the payoff would be a stronger grid supplied by more reliable, low-pollution power.
The core debate is whether a costly investment now would later produce lower, more predictable utility bills. Critics of major nuclear projects say wind and solar can be built faster and at lower cost, while supporters argue those resources alone may not provide enough constant electricity.
That tension is likely to define the debate in New York: whether to accept a costly, slow-moving buildout in exchange for possible future stability, or to prioritize options that may be faster and less expensive but come with different reliability tradeoffs.
The decision could shape what New Yorkers pay for electricity for decades. As University of California San Diego professor David Victor put it: “We’re in the middle of an often proclaimed renaissance in nuclear power. We have a lot of talk about building new reactors — and not a lot of doing.”
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By: Luis Reyes
Published: Aug 25, at 4:30pm ET
Solar projects get announced, photographed from a drone, and then everybody moves on. Nobody circles back in year nine to ask whether the panels are still doing what the press release said they would.
There is one in Copenhagen worth circling back to, because the panels are not on the roof. They are the walls. All 12,000 of them, wrapped around a building full of children, and they have been on the job since 2017.
The Copenhagen International School’s Nordhavn campus is skinned from the first floor up in sea-green photovoltaic tiles, each one 70 centimeters square, each one deliberately crooked.
C.F. Møller Architects, who designed the building, put the active area at 6,048 square meters. That is a little over 65,000 square feet of working facade on a 280,000-square-foot school holding 1,200 students and 280 staff.
And the green is not paint. There is no pigment anywhere on that building.
Pigment would have killed the whole idea. A colored coating sitting on top of a solar cell absorbs the light the cell needs, so you buy your nice facade by giving up output. The way around that is structural color, where the hue comes from light interference in a stack of ultra-thin layers instead of from a chemical.
If that mechanism sounds familiar, it should. It is the same principle behind the terracotta-colored panels Fraunhofer showed off at Intersolar this summer, and behind the blue on a Morpho butterfly’s wing. Different labs, different decades, same physics.
The Copenhagen version came out of EPFL in Lausanne. Researchers there spent years learning to deposit filters onto glass in nanometer-thick layers, so that one narrow band of light bounces back and everything else passes through to the cells.
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The tolerances are unforgiving. Andreas Schüler, who leads the Nanotechnology for Solar Energy Conversion group at EPFL’s Solar Energy and Building Physics Laboratory, has said that a mismatch of five nanometers was enough to throw the color off.
Getting from a lab sample to a building took 12 years. Part of the holdup was industrial rather than scientific: the coating machines have to be at least 100 meters long, and EPFL says European glassmakers passed on the risk. A Dubai factory took it instead, and the glass shipped from there under the Kromatix brand.
Look at photos of the building and it reads like fish scales, or sequins, depending on who is describing it. That is not a rendering effect. Every panel is tipped four degrees off the wall plane and rotated to face one of four directions.
Four degrees is nothing. It does not meaningfully improve the angle of incidence on a vertical wall at 55 degrees north, and that is not really why it is there.
SolarLab, the Danish company that engineered and built the facade, says the scattered tilt was chosen to make the coating’s iridescence do something with the light. The point was to break up the mass of a very large school so it felt less imposing to small kids.
So the whole surface shifts color as clouds move and as you walk past it. On paper that is an architectural indulgence. In practice it is the reason the building got built at all, because a school board that would never approve 12,000 blue-black rectangles will approve something that looks like the harbor.
Here is where I would push back on most of the coverage this building got in 2017. The figure everybody repeated was 300 megawatt-hours a year, which came from the glass supplier before the thing was switched on. It was a projection, not a meter reading.
C.F. Møller’s own project page is more conservative and has stayed that way for nine years: the facade supplies more than half the school’s annual electricity, off 720 kilowatts of installed capacity. The Active House assessment of the building, which scored it after occupancy, logs facade electricity production at 10.7 kWh per square meter of floor area against a total energy demand of 30.1.
Those are compatible claims, not contradictory ones. They are also a long way from “the school runs on sunlight,” which is roughly what the internet decided the story was.
The building also hit a problem nobody puts in a press release. Eurac Research, the Italian institute that catalogs building-integrated solar projects, documented in its case study that the array ran briefly and then sat switched off for months while the local grid operator worked out how to accept the power.
A 720-kilowatt generator turning up on a distribution network that was not expecting one is a paperwork problem before it is an engineering problem. It is also the single most predictable thing that goes wrong with projects like this.
For scale, Cardiff’s Principality Stadium bolted 3,296 ordinary panels to a roof it already owned and expects payback in two to three years. Nobody is claiming the Copenhagen facade pencils out like that.
The pitch for a solar facade is different. It replaces cladding you were going to buy anyway, so the comparison is against stone or aluminum composite, not against a field of racked modules.
SolarLab is based in Aarhus and has been at this since 2012. In 2024 it borrowed 1.6 million euros from Nefco, the Nordic Green Bank, specifically to pull its lamination line back to Denmark and open a sales office in the United States. That office is now listed at 370 Jay Street in Brooklyn.
Chief executive Anders Smith, an architect by training, has explained the sales logic bluntly: Danes call big ground-mounted arrays “iron fields,” and a facade does not need a field. The company cited American tax conditions as the reason to come over.
Its North American work so far is Canadian. Fanshawe College in London, Ontario opened Innovation Village in January 2024, a 126,828-square-foot, CA$55.9 million building by Diamond Schmitt wrapped on all sides in SolarLab cladding. Red River College Polytechnic in Winnipeg has a SolarLab facade. The University of Toronto Scarborough has a health sciences complex coming this year with integrated PV cladding in three tones.
None of those are in the United States. That is not an accident of timing.
The One Big Beautiful Bill Act rewrote the math. Per the Solar Energy Industries Association’s breakdown, the residential 25D credit died on December 31, 2025, and commercial solar under 48E now has a hard fork: begin construction on or before July 4, 2026, or be placed in service by December 31, 2027.
That first date has passed. Any American building that had not started by Independence Day this year is now working to a placed-in-service deadline sixteen months out.
Sixteen months is not a facade schedule. The Copenhagen school was commissioned in 2013 and finished in 2017.
Custom BIPV panels have to be designed around the elevation, sampled, mocked up, wind-tunnel tested, manufactured and then hung. At Copenhagen that meant roughly 70 separate facade sections with protrusions running in every direction. Nobody does that in a year and change.
So the near-term American version of this is likelier to look like the 13,000 panels going onto a JFK terminal roof than like 12,000 tinted tiles going onto a wall. Same rough panel count, entirely different job, and one of them can be procured off a shelf.
The reason to write about this building in 2026 rather than 2017 is that the interesting claim was never the color. It was whether a coating measured in nanometers survives a decade of Baltic weather on a wall nobody can easily reach, and whether a facade made of electrical equipment behaves like a facade.
SolarLab’s own description of the project is more honest than the coverage was. It says the installation was the largest of its kind for many years, past tense, and now functions mostly as an industry reference. That is what a technology looks like when it stops being a stunt.
The kids inside get the better end of it anyway. The array feeds the school’s physics and math classes as a live data set.
Which means somewhere in Nordhavn there is a teenager who has spent a semester arguing with a spreadsheet about what the north wall did in February. That is a better education than most buildings hand out, and it came out of a cladding budget the school was going to spend regardless.
Did we nail it or blow it?
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Germany’s Fraunhofer ISE and the University of Freiburg have combined sputtering and slot-die coating to produce organic PV modules with 43.2 percent average transparency, addressing one of the field’s longest-standing scale-up problems.
Researchers at the University of Freiburg and Fraunhofer ISE have built semi-transparent organic solar modules using a manufacturing process they say is ready for industrial scale-up, combining sputtering and slot-die coating, two techniques that are already proven in other industries, to produce 14.5 by 14.5 centimetre modules with 43.2 percent average transparency and efficiency up to 9.26 percent.
Germany – HZB compound squeezes more from perovskite tandems
The result addresses what the team calls one of the most persistent obstacles in organic photovoltaics. “Scaling up to larger areas is one of the major challenges in the field,” saysDr Uli Würfel, head of the Organic and Perovskite Photovoltaics Department at Fraunhofer ISE. Small, hand-made cells routinely produce strong lab results that fail to translate once production moves to larger areas, since the processes used to build them don’t scale. In this case, slot-die coating applied every layer of the solar cell with what the team describes as virtually no loss, a result Würfel called a major breakthrough for the group. The back electrodes were deposited in a preceding step using sputtering, itself an established industrial process.
Semi-transparent organic photovoltaics involve a persistent trade-off between how much light a module lets through and how much electricity it generates, a relationship the field expresses as light utilisation efficiency, or LUE. At 210.25 square centimetres, the team’s semi-transparent modules reached up to 9.26 percent efficiency at 43.2 percent average visible-light transmittance, working out to a LUE of up to 4.0 percent. The results were published in the journal Joule in early August. “Now that we have the manufacturing process under control, we are optimistic that we can significantly increase transparency without compromising efficiency,” says Würfel.
Higher transparency would open different applications than lower transparency. Organic modules transmitting more than 50 percent of visible light could substitute for window glass in building facades or greenhouses, while lower transparency suits contexts where tinted glass is already desirable, car roofs and certain facade elements among them.
25 years in solar innovation: coatings, PVT and what came next
Each module links more than 100 solar cells through laser structuring. The cells themselves consist of a back electrode, deposited onto a glass substrate by sputtering, that reflects near-infrared light back into the cell; an absorber layer of organic semiconductors; and a metal-free top electrode built from the polymer PEDOT:PSS, applied in multiple layers via slot die. Heraeus Epurio developed a new PEDOT:PSS formulation specifically for that top electrode, contributing to the modules’ higher transparency.
Because slot-die coating is compatible with roll-to-roll manufacturing, it also suits production of solar modules on film. “As part of the project, we have already produced the first flexible, organic PV modules that retain 100 percent of their original efficiency after 1,274 bending cycles over a rod with a diameter of 15 millimeters,” says Dr Mathias List, a research associate for organic and perovskite photovoltaics at Fraunhofer ISE. ROWO Coating manufactured the films used for this test. “The next step is to achieve larger module areas here as well.“
New silicon cells take aim at the cost of space power
Fraunhofer ISE
The work builds directly on an earlier project, Durchblick-PV (See-Through PV), which ran from April 2021 to March 2023 with the same institutional backbone, Fraunhofer ISE, the University of Freiburg, Heraeus Epurio and ROWO Coating, plus ASCA, and the same funding source, the Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Climate. That earlier project set out the basic physics this release now reports as manufactured hardware: certain organic semiconductors absorb infrared radiation strongly while transmitting visible light almost unimpeded, a property that, combined with carefully engineered electrodes, allows a transparent solar module to look continuous rather than gappy. Durchblick-PV’s own published benchmark, around 30 percent transmittance at roughly 10 percent efficiency, gives useful context for how far the manufacturing side has now moved: broadly comparable efficiency, but transparency up more than ten points, achieved through a production method the earlier project was still under development.
Getting to that point required work on both electrodes simultaneously. Thereby, the front electrode needed very high, broadband transmission so both visible and near-infrared light could pass through. The back electrode needed the opposite behaviour in one wavelength band and the same in another: transmitting visible light while reflecting near-infrared light back into the cell for absorption, a job that was handled by sputtered, silver-based multilayer systems developed at Fraunhofer ISE. Modelling and experimental optimisation balanced competing requirements, cutoff wavelength, edge steepness, electrical contact, sheet resistance and manufacturing cost, before laser structuring turned individual cells into scalable modules.
Fraunhofer cracks megawatt EV charging on a small grid link
The research sits within the wider See-Through PV project, backed by the Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Climate, with Heraeus Epurio, ROWO Coating, ASCA and the University of Freiburg as partners. (TF)
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Sweden’s annual volume of decommissioned solar panels could grow from 17 MT in 2021 to as much as 150,000 MT by around 2060, according to a new circular-economy roadmap published by Axfoundation, KTH Royal Institute of Technology, and industry partners including Svea Solar, El-Kretsen, Stena Recycling, and REMONDIS.
The roadmap, developed through the CircSolar project and financed in part by Vinnova, Sweden’s innovation agency, draws on scenario modeling by RISE Research Institutes of Sweden. Depending on the pace of solar deployment and how much of the fleet is repowered – replaced with newer panels before reaching the end of its technical life – RISE estimates annual decommissioning volumes could range from 40,000 MT in a lower-deployment scenario to 150,000 MT in a rapid-expansion scenario by 2060, with larger volumes beginning to emerge from around 2035.
“This roadmap is not the end point, but a starting point for collective action,” said Johanna Olofsson Behrman, project manager for future materials at Axfoundation. “By bringing together actors from across the value chain, CircSolar has shown that circular solutions for solar panels require system innovation, shared responsibility and practical collaboration. The next step is to turn these recommendations into action.”
A typical panel weighs about 20 kg and consists of roughly 67% glass, 16% aluminum, 11% plastic, 4% silicon, and small amounts of metals including silver and copper, according to the roadmap. RISE estimates that dedicated PV recycling infrastructure would need a recurring annual inflow of around 10,000 metric tons to become economically viable – a volume Sweden has not yet approached.
The roadmap warns that panels currently removed from service are often handled together with general electronic waste, which limits opportunities for reuse and specialized recycling. Research led by KTH found that many panels taken out of service are still functional or repairable rather than genuinely at the end of their life.
“After years of exploring what a circular solar power system could look like in practice, we see this roadmap as an important step toward making the transition more tangible,” said Beatriz Pérez Horno, a KTH researcher and one of the roadmap’s authors. “It highlights the opportunities and barriers across the solar value chain and, importantly, helps identify where knowledge, collaboration and action are still needed to turn ambitions into circular and resource-efficient solar systems.”
Under the European Union’s WEEE Directive, member states must collect either 65% of the average weight of electrical equipment placed on their market over the preceding three years, or 85% of the WEEE generated domestically. Separately collected PV panels are subject to specific treatment targets of 85% recovery and 80% preparation for reuse and recycling by weight. Only six of 12 European countries reporting PV-specific treatment data met the 85% recovery target in 2021, according to the European Environment Agency.
The roadmap sets out five priority areas: circular design and responsible production, safer handling and transport of panels, extending the usable life of installed systems, higher-value material recovery, and stronger governance and data-sharing across the value chain. Proposed actions include establishing a dedicated PV waste category under the WEEE Directive, developing standardized testing and certification for second-life panels, and creating a national database tracking installed, decommissioned, and planned solar capacity.
“As the industry’s leading actor, we initiated this roadmap because we see both a responsibility and an opportunity to help shape a more circular future,” said Mattias Ringqvist, CEO of Svea Solar. “Extending the lifetime of solar panels and ensuring they are handled responsibly at end of life must become a natural part of how this industry grows.”
Similar challenges are expected elsewhere in Europe as larger volumes of PV modules reach end of life. The European Commission’s Joint Research Centre estimates the EU could accumulate between 21 million MT and 35 million MT of cumulative photovoltaic waste by 2050, with global volumes potentially reaching 60 million MT to 80 million MT over the same period.
Some recyclers are already working to improve recovery economics. A pilot process using electrohydraulic shockwave fragmentation has recovered more than 99.5% of a panel’s original weight in testing, including pathways for silicon and silver recovery, while separate EU-funded projects have developed dedicated recycling lines for silicon-based modules.
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Rate increases for customers in Colorado Springs Utilities’ net metering solar program have moved closer to taking effect next year.
The Colorado Springs City Council voted 6-2 to advance the proposed rate changes at Tuesday’s council meeting, after several hours of a public hearing where residents and solar providers voiced their concerns.
The official vote on the net metering changes is scheduled to take place during the Sept. 22 council meeting.
The net metering program covers residents who have connected home solar panels to the city’s electricity grid. Customers receive credits for the excess power they generate and provide to the city system during the day and often use those credits to reduce their bills at other times.
Tuesday was Colorado Springs Utilities’ second attempt to overhaul and increase the rates for the net metering program. A previous proposal last fall was pulled out of a larger rate case by the City Council, which also serves as the Utilities board, after a similar show of opposition from solar customers.
Utilities Chief Financial Officer Tristan Gearhart said the core issue was that net metering customers still relied on the broader system for power during the peak evening hours but did not pay as much because of their credits. The difference amounted to around $4.5 million that the utility had to generate from other customers.
“As long as it credits the daytime use in the evening hours, it will never catch up, no matter where you set these rates at,” Gearhart said.
Utilities staff proposed two options for increases for customers. One option is to pay an extra $1 per day in a connection charge and otherwise switch to the Energy Wise rates used by other utility customers. The other path is to have rates set based on the maximum 15-minute demand for power they used during the previous month.
Both options are estimated to increase the average monthly bill by around $38 per month, which nearly doubles the current average bill through net metering.
The new rates are proposed to take effect on April 1, 2027. Existing net metering customers would be grandfathered in with the current rates through April 2032 as long as they don’t make any changes to their current system.
“There are many other options that you’ve heard today, and it would be well within your requirement to investigate all those options, not just these pretty terrible options,” resident Rick Allen said.
Councilmember David Leinweber said the approach treated all solar customers the same, whether they were nearly self-sufficient with solar panels or had a small system. Leinweber worried that the bill increases would cause current solar customers to disconnect from net metering or abandon their solar panels entirely.
“I think we’re getting to a place where I don’t think there is enough of a benefit that we’re offsetting that, particularly for someone who can’t afford a large-scale solar system,” Leinweber said.
The proposal also raised concerns from several solar panel companies. The end of the federal tax credit for home solar panels in December 2025 already cut the demand for new solar panels by at least half, according to multiple companies.
Alexander Antipov, the owner of Colorado Solar Innovations, said that he had largely switched from working with residents to providing solar to businesses and nonprofits because of the challenges.
“Your lack of planning does not constitute an emergency on behalf of solar users and solar builders. It doesn’t work,” Antipov said.
One solution suggested by Antipov and several other residents was for Utilities to create a program that supported small battery storage. Battery storage would allow solar customers to use their banked power during the hours when their panels aren’t active.
The batteries cost thousands of additional dollars to install, which makes them an optional luxury when solar panels already cost around $30,000. Gearhart said that of the roughly 11,000 homes in the net metering program, fewer than 400 had battery storage.
Gearhart agreed with those concerns, saying Utilities staff are actively working to design a rebate program or other incentives to make it easier to install batteries. However, he said that program could not be supported until net metering rates went up and the ‘hole’ caused by their lower bills had been addressed.
“Solar batteries are truly a game-changer as a utility company,” Gearhart said. “It’s just hard to be able to get the math to calculate out for those programs.”
Councilmember Nancy Henjum proposed that the changes should not take effect until after Utilities had proposed a program to support battery storage at customers’ homes. That proposal was rejected 5-3, with Kimberly Gold and Leinweber supporting Henjum’s idea.
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Chinese solar PV installations have reached 14.08GW in July 2026, according to the latest data from China’s National Energy Administration (NEA).
This represents a 28% year-on-year increase in solar PV installations, while wind power installations also surged, totalling 8.45GW, up 271% from the same period last year. These figures mark a significant monthly rebound for the country’s wind and PV sectors.
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Despite the year-on-year increase in July, cumulative solar PV installations for the first seven months of the year reached 86.15GW at the end of July, representing a 61% year-on-year decline. Wind power additions fell by 12% to 47.07GW over the same period.
However, total installed power capacity reached 4.08TW by the end of July, up 11% year on year. PV capacity stood at 1,290GW (+16.1% YoY), while wind capacity hit 690GW (+19.5% YoY). Meanwhile, the national average utilisation hours for power generation equipment totalled 1,671 hours in the first seven months, down 135 hours from the previous year.
Industry analysts attribute the steep year-on-year drop in cumulative PV installations to a policy-driven installation rush in May 2025, which led to low cumulative installations for the first half of 2026. Despite the cumulative decline, July marked a return to monthly growth. Distributed PV—particularly the residential segment—has outperformed expectations and is expected to be a key variable for full-year 2026 volumes. Current forecasts project annual PV installations to range between 160GW and 200GW.
As of the end of June, China’s combined cumulative wind and PV installations reached 1.98TW, accounting for 48.4% of the nation’s total installed capacity—underscoring the growing share of wind and solar PV in China’s energy mix.

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Jalisco and industry non-profit Rafiqui have established Mexico’s first specialized solar panel recycling plant in Ciudad Guzmán, addressing mounting photovoltaic waste as the state’s installed solar capacity nears 658MW. Supported by manufacturers like LONGi and industry body AMIF, the project establishes critical circular economy infrastructure for end-of-life hardware. This development signals a strategic shift for Mexico’s renewable energy sector, enabling solar operators, original equipment manufacturers, and corporate power consumers to mitigate ESG compliance risks, secure secondary raw material recovery, and align with global waste management standards.
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Mexico’s first specialized solar panel recycling plant has been established in Ciudad Guzmán, Jalisco. The project was launched through a joint initiative between Rafiqui, a non-profit association comprising approximately 17 solar industry companies, and the Jalisco state government.
The facility, reported to operate with structural support from the Mexican Photovoltaic Industry Association (AMIF), addresses the rapid expansion of photovoltaic infrastructure in Jalisco, where roughly 1.6 million solar panels are currently installed. Between 2022 and 2024, the volume of installed solar panels in the state nearly doubled. Jalisco’s Minister of Sustainable Energy Development, Manuel Herrera, stated that the recycling plant originated from working groups formed in January 2025 under the state’s sustainable energy plan.
The plant is situated within the Zapotlan 2000 industrial park in Ciudad Guzman. Ximena Cantú, Director, Rafiqui,  noted that the site was selected for its location and facility characteristics. The association is organizing collection campaigns to establish logistics for panel delivery. When announced, the facility was projected to expand its technical scope to a second phase in which it would be able to recycle lithium batteries.
Before processing, equipment will undergo technical evaluation to determine whether units can be reused or donated to non-profit organizations and communities. For panels reaching the end of their lifecycle, the recycling procedure begins with the removal of the aluminum frame, followed by mechanical crushing and material separation. Through this process, up to 98% of component materials, including glass, aluminum, silicon, silver, copper, and plastic, can be recovered.
Equipment for the facility represented an investment of approximately MX$5 million (US$295,025) to MX$6 million, as reported by Milenio. The operational launch comes alongside projections from the International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA), which estimates that Mexico will generate between 6,500t and 30,000t of solar panel waste by 2030, depending on regular and early-loss hardware replacement rates.
Global Technology Support for Circular Economy
To strengthen end-of-life management infrastructure, global solar manufacturer LONGi partnered with Rafiqui in July 2025 to support the development of Mexico’s panel recycling ecosystem, as reported by MBN. LONGi’s participation aligns with its broader “Solar for Solar” strategy and global PV Cycle network integrations, leveraging international recycling benchmarks, such as its support for Brazil’s SunR facility, to scale sustainable waste management solutions across the Mexican market.
Solar Panel Recycling: Imperatives and Challenges
In an MBN Expert Contributor piece, Ana Gutierrez, Product Manager, Maxeon Solar Technologies, highlighted that circularity remains a critical component of ESG often overlooked in solar energy discussions. She emphasized that while Mexico’s rapid market growth in 2024 positioned it at the forefront of the global energy transition, the country lacked comprehensive regulatory frameworks and national infrastructure for managing end-of-life solar equipment. 
She considers that without mandatory circularity policies requiring manufacturers and suppliers to manage the end-of-life phase of modules, Mexico risks creating severe long-term environmental hazards through landfill accumulation while missing key opportunities for green job creation and supply chain transparency.
Data from the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) notes that the global cumulative value of recoverable raw materials from end-of-life panels could reach US$450 million by 2030, equivalent to the raw materials needed to produce roughly 60 million new panels. 
According to EPA, standard crystalline-silicon recycling involves three main technical phases: removing the outer aluminum frame and junction box; separating glass, which accounts for 75% of panel weight, from silicon wafers via thermal, mechanical, or chemical processes; and purifying internal silicon cells along with specialty metals like silver, copper, and tin through chemical and electrical techniques.
Beyond direct material recovery, panel refurbishment and secondary market reuse in off-grid applications, such as EV charging stations, present additional pathways to divert solar hardware from landfills and maximize lifecycle sustainability, EPA’s webpage notes.

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Denied solar farm moves forward following court order  Roanoke Times
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Solar panels have a dirty secret: roughly 80 percent of the sunlight striking them never becomes electricity. It becomes heat, and that heat makes the panel worse at its only job. A Stanford University team decided to stop throwing that energy away. They bolted a copper tube cold plate to the back of a standard panel, cooled the module down, boosted its electrical output by 59.3 percent, and routed the captured waste heat into a reactor that pulls bagged fertilizer out of real human urine.
The result is not a lab curiosity. The research, published in Nature Water in August 2025, has since spawned a startup called Recovered Potential that is already pitching its system to slaughterhouses, backed by a U.S. Department of Energy program slot.
The core insight is straightforward. Photovoltaic cells lose voltage as they warm up, so a scorching summer afternoon can paradoxically produce less power than a cool, bright morning. The industry’s standard response has been to let that heat dissipate into the air. On a typical rooftop installation, every panel is shedding thermal energy right now, and nothing is catching it.
Stanford’s rig catches it. A copper tube plate sits flush against the back of the solar module. Coolant flows through the tubes, pulling heat away from the cells. The panel runs cooler, its voltage holds steadier, and electrical output climbs. Against earlier prototypes built without heat transfer or current control, the paired system delivered 59.3 percent more power, with a margin of error of 3.6 percentage points.
That alone would be unremarkable. Photovoltaic-thermal (PVT) systems, like hybrid solar converters that capture both heat and light, have existed for decades. The twist is where the warm coolant goes next: directly into an electrochemical reactor that needs warmth to function efficiently.
The reactor employs a process called electrochemical stripping, a technique originally developed by Will Tarpeh during his PhD at UC Berkeley. Urine flows into an electrochemical cell divided into chambers by ion-selective membranes. An electrical current, supplied by the same solar panel, drags ammonium ions across those membranes. The chemistry converts them to ammonia gas, which is then trapped on the far side in acid, producing ammonium sulfate.
Ammonium sulfate is a standard, widely used fertilizer. Nothing exotic comes out of this system. The output is the same bagged product stacked on farm supply store shelves.
The bottleneck in the process has always been the gas-escape step: ammonia must physically leave the liquid before it can be captured. Heat accelerates that transition, which is precisely why routing the panel’s waste heat into the reactor matters. The warming improved ammonia recovery efficiency by 22.4 percent compared to unheated runs, though the wider error margin of 7.4 percentage points is worth noting.
The team also installed charge controllers to prevent the panel from dumping excess current into the electrochemical cell. Pushing more amps than the cell can use wastes energy without moving additional nitrogen. The paper reports a saving of 2.24 kilojoules per gram of nitrogen for every excess milliamp per square centimeter avoided.
The study models net fertilizer revenues of up to $2.18 per kilogram of nitrogen in U.S. markets and up to $4.13 in African markets, where fertilizer costs are higher and grid infrastructure is thinner. Those are modeled ceilings under the paper’s assumptions, not sums anyone has been paid yet.
For context, DTN’s retail survey in mid-August 2026 placed urea at $678 per ton and anhydrous ammonia at $964 per ton. Converted to the paper’s units, an American farmer is currently paying roughly $1.63 per kilogram of nitrogen as urea and about $1.30 as anhydrous. The modeled ceiling clears both figures, even in a year when prices have swung sharply. Anhydrous ammonia hit $1,118 per ton in May before falling back, and urea ranged from $611 to $866 between February and April.
Those swings exist because industrial nitrogen fertilizer is fundamentally a natural gas product, a dependency that has pushed countries like India to lock in green ammonia supply agreements as an alternative. The International Energy Agency estimates ammonia production accounts for roughly 2 percent of global final energy consumption and about 450 million tonnes of direct CO2 emissions annually, making it nearly twice as emissions-intensive as crude steel.
The nitrogen already dissolved in human urine worldwide represents approximately 14 percent of annual global fertilizer demand. No one is claiming a solar panel and a copper plate can replace the Haber-Bosch process that dominates industrial ammonia production, though other projects are exploring solar-powered approaches to hydrogen and ammonia production at larger scales. The claim is narrower and more practical: a significant fraction of the nitrogen the world buys is being flushed away by the very populations that need it.
Lead author Orisa Coombs, a mechanical engineering PhD student at Stanford, captured the appeal simply: “You don’t need a giant chemical plant or even a wall socket.” Several of the experimental runs used synthetic urine for consistency, but others used the real thing, which matters because actual urine is chemically complex and full of compounds that foul membranes.
The technology has moved beyond the university lab. Recovered Potential, a startup based in Menlo Park, California, was founded by two researchers from Tarpeh’s Stanford group. CEO Kindle Williams, a former postdoc with a chemical engineering PhD from MIT, and CTO Jinyu Guo, who completed her Stanford PhD in the same lab, are leading the commercialization effort. Tarpeh serves as founding scientific advisor.
The company reports impressive technical achievements:
Two external markers support the timeline. In October 2025, the Department of Energy’s advanced research arm named ten winners under RECOVER, a nearly $25 million program targeting ammonia and critical mineral recovery from American wastewater. Recovered Potential is one of them, collaborating with Tarpeh’s Stanford lab and the Guest lab at the University of Illinois on recovering ammonium, phosphorus, and magnesium from anaerobic digestate. In 2026, both Williams and Guo were named to Activate’s fellowship cohort for hard-tech founders.
The company’s target customer list reveals the commercial logic. Recovered Potential is pursuing anaerobic digestate, meat and poultry processing waste, and fertilizer plant waste, all high-strength nitrogen streams where nitrogen arrives already concentrated, exactly what the electrochemical chemistry prefers. A flushed toilet, by contrast, is a dilute source that the system is not optimized for in its current form.
The business model follows naturally. Ammonia in wastewater is a compliance burden for the facility discharging it and a product for the farmer who needs it. The recovered fertilizer offsets part of the treatment cost, making the system a waste-management solution that happens to produce a saleable byproduct.
The solar-powered, off-grid version of the technology remains the longer-term vision. Coombs is building a follow-up prototype with triple the reactor capacity to push toward deployments where neither grid power nor centralized infrastructure exists.
One open question is longevity. Solar panels are famously durable, with modules still feeding the grid decades after installation even as their inverters have been swapped multiple times. A copper cold plate bonded to the back of a module is one more component that can fail, and the membranes, sulfuric acid supply, and urine collection logistics are where distributed nitrogen recovery has historically stalled.
What has changed in the past year is that the people who built the experiment now have a company, a DOE program number, and a prospect list that starts with a rendering plant rather than a toilet. Whether the economics hold at a commercial scale remains to be proven, but the combination of improved solar output and fertilizer production from waste streams that already exist represents a compelling dual-revenue model that neither technology could achieve alone.
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The US National Laboratory of the Rockies (NLR) has certified tunnel oxide passivated contact (TOPCon) modules produced by Chinese solar manufacturer Runergy with a conversion efficiency of 25.9%.
The modules are the company’s TOPCon 3.0 series, its third generation of TOPCon panels that was launched at this year’s Intersolar Europe event in June. During the event, Runergy said that the cells have a maximum conversion efficiency of 26.9%, slightly higher than NLR certified, but the company said that the module efficiency figure is still “a record for all non-HBC (heterojunction back contact) crystalline-silicon modules”.
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The company also specified that the standard-format mass-produced variant of the module series would have a power output of 660-670W, meaning both the module’s efficiency and output metrics clear the minimum values introduced by the Chinese government over the summer. For TOPCon modules to be made available to sell, they must have a conversion efficiency of 23.2% and a minimum rated power of 630W, starting from next year.
Runergy attributed the strong output of its latest modules to a “multi-cut circuit architecture” that minimises power losses within the module.
“This is not just a new TOPCon module world record,” said Runergy general manager and PV R&D laboratory director Tao Longzhong. “Critically, the module is fabricated using cells and module processes from mass‑production‑ready pilot lines, proving high efficiency and commercial manufacturability can go hand‑in‑hand.”
This emphasis on developing modules that can be quickly produced at scale is significant, as module installations in China grew significantly in July. According to data from China’s National Energy Administration (NEA), China added over 14GW of new solar PV capacity in July, a 28% year-on-year increase in capacity additions.
However, the long-term picture is less clear, as the China Photovoltaic Industry Association (CPIA) expects annual capacity additions to fall from 315GW last year to between 180GW and 240GW this year, as the industry looks to slow capacity additions to tackle the unsustainably low prices that have affected the sector for several years.
NEA figures show that China added 86.2GW of new capacity in the first seven months of this year, a pace that would put year-end capacity additions lower than even the more conservative estimate made by the CPIA earlier this year.

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For better or for worse, the Iberville Parish Council rendered a decision that may — or may not — have long-reaching effects in terms of a rapidly growing industry that wants to do business in the parish.
Granted, industry has not been a big source of stress in Iberville Parish when petrochemical entities pump millions of dollars in revenue into our local economy.
Petrochemical has been a constant source of new revenue for nearly 70 years, starting with the opening of Dow Chemical and going on from there.
Now, a new industry is knocking at the door. But this time, the parish isn’t so eager to unlock it.
The Iberville Parish Council’s no vote on whether to allow Entergy to move forward on plans for a proposed Cypress Harvest Solar Farm did not come as that big of a surprise.
Residents have packed the meeting chamber several times in the past few months to voice opposition to solar farms.
The vote to reject the request came after residents asked the Council members to nix the plan.
Some fear they may pose a threat to health. Others worry about the impact on agriculture.
Another group does not want it because they’re no aesthetic gem, which leads some to fear a decline in property value. One can’t fault them for listening to their constituents, but it may not be the last they hear of solar farms.
While Parish President Chris Daigle emphasized that Entergy’s request met all requirements of the ordinance council members put in place in 2023, residents remained steadfastly opposed — and enough of the Council agreed, leading to denial of Entergy’s request.
What’s one man’s meat is another man’s poison, however.
West Baton Rouge seized the opportunity, and the same goes for Pointe Coupee. Granted, they’re nothing that adds beauty to the rural surroundings.
To the contrary, they’re ugly.
But are they necessarily a harm?
Pointe Coupee Parish — a parish with a fraction of Iberville and West Baton Rouge’s revenue — welcomed the projects with open arms. Pointe Coupee’s core industry is sugar, and there’s just not much else in that area in terms of manufacturing.
Daigle said after the meeting he worries about the precedent his Council’s vote set for other prospective industries.
Indeed, he believes in the rights of landowners.
At the same time, he recognizes when an industry seeking a permit has followed all the guidelines the parish has put in place.
Chances are that the loss of the solar farm won’t even amount to a dot on the radar in terms of a missed opportunity for economic impact.
When we have a large petrochemical industrial presence in Iberville Parish, it’s easy to say “no.”
Having a Hyundai Steel plant set to begin construction this fall just south of the parish line doesn’t hurt Iberville, either. It may be in Ascension, but in terms of jobs and related industry, Iberville will get its share of the gravy.
But what does the future hold for solar farms?
Drive through Texas, as I will be doing in a couple hours, and it’s plainly visible. Solar farms line much of Interstate 10 through the Lone Star State.
They’re not at all pretty, but they’re bringing even more money to one of the wealthiest states in the nation.
It may have been easy to say “no” this time, but they can’t say it will always be that way.
In fact, it may not be the economy that dictates what happens. It could be a court judge who makes the call.
The Parish Council’s vote may have put the brakes on a solar farm for now, but it’s probably not the last that parish residents have heard about this issue.

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Mexico’s first solar panel recycling plant coming to Jalisco  Mexico News Daily
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play 10 80 K R L D on Audacy
A Y Combinator-backed startup founded by University of Cambridge engineers is developing fleets of autonomous drones designed to disperse low- and mid-level clouds over solar farms and increase electricity output.
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A Y Combinator-backed startup founded by University of Cambridge engineers is developing fleets of autonomous drones designed to disperse low- and mid-level clouds over solar farms and increase electricity output.
Meteoric Technologies Inc. says its drones would fly into clouds roughly 1 to 5 kilometers high and mechanically alter the water droplets that form them, reducing reflectivity so more sunlight reaches the panels below. The company states the process uses no chemicals and requires no new ground infrastructure.
According to CEO and co-founder Mete Karslioglu, low- and mid-level overcast clouds can cut incoming sunlight by 73% to 82% while overhead. Meteoric’s models project that clearing those clouds could raise annual generation from existing solar assets by 10% to 30% across major U.S. grid regions, potentially adding $5,000 to $28,000 of value per megawatt.

Today, we’re launching Meteoric (YC S26).

Our drones clear clouds over solar farms to increase their annual output by 10-30% without using any chemicals.

Ultimate target: weaken severe storms and hurricanes.https://t.co/Vt1ZGbMith pic.twitter.com/ISjbavdeDD
The company reports that a working prototype dissipated an artificial cloud by 13% in controlled cloud-chamber tests. It plans first large-scale cloud-clearing flights in 2027. Karslioglu has said the longer-term goal is to scale the technology to reduce the intensity of severe storms and hurricanes.
Meteoric, based in San Francisco and part of Y Combinator’s Summer 2026 batch, was co-founded by Karslioglu and CTO Eric Nilsson. Both previously worked on atmospheric and droplet-related research at Cambridge. The company lists potential uplift estimates that vary by region, with modeled highs of 30% in the New York ISO area and lower figures in places such as ERCOT and CAISO.
Independent verification of real-world performance is not yet available. The technology remains in early development, and regulatory, safety and environmental questions around any form of weather modification would need to be addressed before commercial deployment.

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A Y Combinator-backed startup founded by University of Cambridge engineers is developing fleets of autonomous drones designed to disperse low- and mid-level clouds over solar farms and increase electricity output.
Meteoric Technologies Inc. says its drones would fly into clouds roughly 1 to 5 kilometers high and mechanically alter the water droplets that form them, reducing reflectivity so more sunlight reaches the panels below. The company states the process uses no chemicals and requires no new ground infrastructure.
According to CEO and co-founder Mete Karslioglu, low- and mid-level overcast clouds can cut incoming sunlight by 73% to 82% while overhead. Meteoric’s models project that clearing those clouds could raise annual generation from existing solar assets by 10% to 30% across major U.S. grid regions, potentially adding $5,000 to $28,000 of value per megawatt.

Today, we’re launching Meteoric (YC S26).

Our drones clear clouds over solar farms to increase their annual output by 10-30% without using any chemicals.

Ultimate target: weaken severe storms and hurricanes.https://t.co/Vt1ZGbMith pic.twitter.com/ISjbavdeDD
The company reports that a working prototype dissipated an artificial cloud by 13% in controlled cloud-chamber tests. It plans first large-scale cloud-clearing flights in 2027. Karslioglu has said the longer-term goal is to scale the technology to reduce the intensity of severe storms and hurricanes.
Meteoric, based in San Francisco and part of Y Combinator’s Summer 2026 batch, was co-founded by Karslioglu and CTO Eric Nilsson. Both previously worked on atmospheric and droplet-related research at Cambridge. The company lists potential uplift estimates that vary by region, with modeled highs of 30% in the New York ISO area and lower figures in places such as ERCOT and CAISO.
Independent verification of real-world performance is not yet available. The technology remains in early development, and regulatory, safety and environmental questions around any form of weather modification would need to be addressed before commercial deployment.

LISTEN on the Audacy App
Tell your Smart Speaker to "PLAY 1080 KRLD"
Sign Up to receive our KRLD Insider Newsletter for more news
Follow us on Facebook | Twitter | Instagram | YouTube

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Our 5-month-old great-granddaughter lives 1.6 miles from the proposed Project Shelby data center at the former Ford plant in Canton.
JRC Early Childhood/Adult Day Care, which serves infants, toddlers, preschool, school age, Early Head Start, and senior citizens, is 0.74 miles from the proposed site.
In March 2023, the U.S. EPA defined a two-mile radius around Republic Steel as an area of concern for lead air-quality standards. On May 18, Ohio granted another Brownfield Remediation Grant of $300,000 to assess the work still needed at the Republic Steel site. Residents in the Project Shelby area must still take precautions after being poisoned by Republic Steel.
There is no transparency regarding Project Shelby.
In 2025, a solar project (150-megawatt on 860 acres) planned for Washington Township was stopped. It was not located on a brownfield. Stark County commissioners opposed it. Janet Weir Creighton was an ad hoc member on the Ohio Power Siting Board that made the decision. The Project Shelby property is owned by A&J Urban Development, operated by Steve Coon and Todd Pugh (founder of Enviroscapes). Enviroscapes is 3.4 miles from the proposed solar farm.
The same people who fought a solar farm are now pushing a 320-megawatt data center 500 feet away from Canton city residents who have been historically discriminated against because of redlining and who have already been poisoned by the continued Republic Steel brownfield. Our 5-month-old great-granddaughter and all Canton residents deserve better.
Nancy and Bob George, Canton

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“We’re talking about a step change in module performance without compromising lifetime,” claims Scott Graybeal, chief executive officer of Caelux. The company produces perovskite solar products that are incorporated into solar module glass; a unique approach that allows their technology to fit into existing module supply lines, rather than requiring entirely new production processes to incorporate perovskite thin-film layers directly into a solar cell.
Graybeal is confident that his company’s tech will be part of a fundamental shift in solar technology over the coming years, with perovskite-tandem products being adopted in various forms across the industry. “Every module in the world in the 2030s will have perovskite,” he tells us. A bold prediction, given that so far perovskites have made it into almost no commercially available solar panels because the material is too volatile to sustain years of outdoor use. It can degrade, lose performance and become an unviable prospect for project owners and investors.
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We spoke with Graybeal, who is appearing at the PV CellTech USA 2026 conference in San Francisco this October, about Caelux’s technology offering, the company’s recent deals with Indian solar manufacturers and the potential impact of perovskite technology.
Graybeal’s company offers a different technological solution to perovskite PV than most. Many firms researching or producing perovskite-silicon tandem products focus on a tandem cell, where perovskite films are laid directly on top of silicon base cells and sealed within glass. There are variations within this approach, with two- or four-terminal options and different silicon cell technologies, but the focus remains on building the cell itself.
Caelux puts perovskite material onto the solar glass directly, leaving the silicon cell within the module untouched. The reasons for pursuing this approach are both technical and financial, Graybeal explains.
First, it means Caelux does not have to establish module manufacturing lines or expertise. “One of the metrics we drive the business towards is the return on invested capital,” he says, “And for us, building out a module line to complement what we’re doing here and going to market with new modules did two things. One, it really extended the horizon where we could see revenue. It also increased the costs to the extent that our return on our capital investments…[would] probably never achieve the kinds of levels that we want.”
‘Traditional’ perovskite architecture, with the different materials both within the cell, can offer higher total efficiencies than Caelux’s glass solution, Graybeal admits. “There’s one less layer [in those products] of the transparent conductive oxide than [Caelux] needs, because in our device you need to be able to shine light all the way through it to reach the silicon; in their case it goes through the perovskite, you don’t need an intermediate conductor.”
However, he also claims that if perovskite degrades in a traditional format, the whole product can be compromised, whereas the separation between the perovskite and the silicon in Caelux’s product means the underlying cell can still function.
Graybeal says that the company’s decision to “laser focus” on the perovskite material on solar glass and forego the other aspects of panel making means it has “developed expertise… and then [can] work with folks that make modules day in and day out, harness their knowledge, and use our technology to make their product better.”
He also claims that asset owners value this approach, as it provides “supply chain flexibility, insofar as they’ve got multiple module producers [to choose from].” He even claims that Caelux’s technology has been singled out as “part of a selection decision a couple of years down the road”.
“That’s that’s a good thing,” he continues. “We want to be viewed as an enabler of all these various module players to go and really get to that next level of performance. And so, what we’re talking about is this step change in module performance without compromising lifetime.”  
This is the approach the company has brought to its recent deals with Rayzon Solar and Navitas Solar in India. Last month, the company announced two 5GW “commercialisation” deals with the two firms, where it will aim to integrate its perovskite glass with the module manufacturers’ n-type TOPCon modules over a five-year partnership.
India is a “key strategic market” for Caelux, Graybeal says. He says the company targets places that “are encouraging regional manufacturing”, and policies like India’s Approved List of Models and Manufacturers (ALMM) and Production Linked Incentive (PLI) fit the bill.
“There’ll be even more coming down the pipe in India as they look to really build out a very comprehensive domestic business, and we want to be a part of that,” he says.
The goal with the Rayzon and Navitas deals is to “build a backlog of business” that will one day justify an investment or co-investment in an Indian manufacturing facility. The partnerships are both aiming to begin producing TOPCon modules with perovskite glass in 2028-29, “which gives us enough time to do everything we need to do to either build a new site or take on a brownfield site that meet our needs,” Graybeal says.
“We’re very proud of the deals with Navitas and Rayzon, and there will be more,” he tells us. Alongside expanding industrial solar manufacturing capacity, Graybeal says that the ecosystem of R&D and cutting-edge technology is growing in India too, despite most of the industry’s technological focus being in the EU, US and China. Indian companies have linked up with European institutes like ISC Konstanz and Fraunhofer ISE, for example.
But while Caelux will expand in India and plans to bring some R&D staff over there, its model focuses on developing processes at its headquarters in Baldwin Park, California and copying those exactly at “satellite” manufacturing locations.
As such, Graybeal confirms to us that Caelux’s first manufacturing location will be in the US, with India likely to host the second.
Graybeal has been in the solar module technology business for 19 years, and sees the coming generation of technology as a “step change.”
 We used to grind a 10th of a percent, two tenths of a percent…a half percent would be a huge, huge innovation,” Graybeal says. “This technology is five to six to seven percent absolute efficiency improvement.
“So if you’ve got a 21% [efficiency] PERC device today, with our technology that’s going to be somewhere in the neighbourhood of 26,27,28%. So that’s a big leap forward, and in terms of economics, this is a massive improvement in project IRRs,” he says.
Graybeal believes that every module in the 2030s will contain perovskite. Largely because there “isn’t a path for silicon to have a significant boost in its output,” and the growing demand from electrification across the world will call for more efficient solar installations.
This is impressive on paper, but perovskites have been found wanting when it comes to durability outside of the laboratory. The material degrades very quickly, losing its effectiveness at converting light into electricity and impacting the bottom line for solar projects. Caelux may hold the solution, as may a firm like Oxford PV which claims to have sold its first commercially viable perovskite-tandem modules to a US buyer, but the 25- to 30-year expected lifetimes of modern solar modules have not conclusively been proven possible with perovskite.
“I think there tends to be a pretty broad brush painted over the industry, that ‘perovskites are X’,” he says. “I think that’s like saying a Bentley and a Toyota Camry are both cars.
“We’ve done a lot with the fundamentals of the chemistry, whether it’s through additives, different structures or different process techniques, which has enabled us to really achieve the durability results that we have been able to talk to people about,” he continues. He claims that the company is “already in the process of qualification and certification of the technology,” and that its tech today can “support 25-year ‘lifetimes’”. By way of an anecdote, he says that Caelux has deployed its perovskite material outdoors and has “not observed any degradation” over six weeks.
At its root, Graybeal seems to suggest that Caelux’s difference is its focus on the bottom line and the end use case for perovskite. “You’ve got to understand the problem you’re trying to solve. And for us, it’s about economic generation. That’s it. How do we make this cost-effective, and how do we just make it better?”
Innovations in US solar manufacturing will be explored in detail at our annual PV CellTech USA conference in San Francisco on 13-14 October 2026. For full agenda and booking details, click the link above.

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South Korea’s tiered electricity pricing system can lead to a rebound effect following residential solar adoption, according to new research.
Researchers Jiyoung Eum and Gyeong-Seok Choi, from the Korea Institute of Civil Engineering and Building Technology in Goyang, explored whether installing residential solar systems can lead to households in South Korea using more electricity after adopting solar, a phenomenon known as the rebound effect, which occurs when the expected benefits of a more resource-efficient technology are partly offset by changes in consumer behavior or energy use.
In residential solar, for example, households may consume more electricity after installing PV because their self-generated power effectively lowers the cost of consumption. This, in turn, can partially offset the energy-saving and emissions-reduction benefits initially expected from the installation.
Eum and Choi built a simulation framework that matches hourly solar generation against household electricity use to calculate self-consumption rates. It also tracked how households respond when solar adoption shifts them into cheaper price tiers under Korea’s progressive tariff.
Their results found the rebound effect is concentrated in households that cross a tariff tier, with these households offsetting between 11-22% of expected energy savings. In contrast, households that stayed within the same tier saw virtually no rebound effect.
Eum told pv magazine the findings show that PV clearly reduces household electricity use and bills but part of the expected savings can be offset as households increase their consumption.
“Under Korea’s progressive tariff, our study finds that this offset is concentrated in households whose consumption falls into a lower tariff tier after installing PV,” Eum said. “These are simulation-based estimates, and verifying them with metered household data would be a useful extension.”
Additional findings from the research paper found households miss annual emission reductions of 19 to 120 kg of CO2 depending on how many months they spend in transition between tariffs, leading to the suggestion that policymakers evaluating residential solar programs should no longer assume uniform decarbonization outcomes.
The research paper also explores the rebound effect in the context of South Korea’s net metering mechanism, finding that net metering amplifies rather than removes the rebound.
Analysis from the research paper says the rebound effect of high-consumption households effectively doubles, from 4.5% to about 9%, under net metering, as these households are likely to drop their grid consumption and therefore cross into a cheaper tier. 
The paper concludes that Korea’s progressive electricity tariff can generate potential rebound effects that partially offset intended energy and emissions savings, uncovering “a dynamic that existing policy evaluation frameworks have not accounted for.” As a result, it recommends that rebound adjustment factors differentiated by tier-transition status, system capacity and net-metering eligibility should be incorporated into PV policy evaluation frameworks.
Eum also explained that government support remains an important driver of residential PV in South Korea, with national subsidy programs reducing the upfront installation cost.
Some local governments adds further support, Eum continued, meaning the level and availability of the support can differ by region and from year to year.
When asked what incentives or policies could help support South Korea’s residential PV market, Eum said continued support for reducing the upfront cost is key to sustaining deployment. 
“Solar PV incentives and electricity tariff design are also worth considering together, since the tariff structure affects both household bill savings and the rebound that follows,” the scientist added.
The research findings are presented in the paper “Rebound effects of residential PV adoption under progressive electricity tariffs in South Korea, available in the journal Energy and Buildings.“
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Our special edition for Intersolar South America 2026 is here!
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Case Studies / Industrial Robots / Robots addressing the UN SDGs

Hyperflex pre-assembles a portion of the solar tracker, which measures up to 12 m long and 5 m wide. © Daniel Mora
Traditional methods require significant manual labor and are subject to cost fluctuations and often face delays due to workforce constraints or unpredictable logistics. 
In response to these challenges, EDP, a global leader in the renewable energy sector with an ambitious portfolio of solar projects around the world and a strong focus on innovation, tested Comau’s unique mobile robotic factory to automate the assembly and installation of photovoltaic (PV) panels in the field. The project would mark the first time EDP would use advanced automation to build one of its photovoltaic solar parks under real-life installation conditions.
After defining the project’s initial scope, the joint engineering team needed to develop an innovative approach that would give EDP the required flexibility while ensuring maximum precision and repeatability during the installation process. The companies agreed to use Comau’s Hyperflex rover to install 3MW of EDP’s 122MW capacity solar park in Peñaflor, Valladolid, Spain. The primary focus was evaluating Hyperflex’s impact on installation speed, worker safety, and overall operational efficiency. In tandem, Comau’s MATE-XT wearable exoskeletons would be used to provide ergonomically assisted support for workers during overhead and repetitive tasks. Indeed, the multi-faceted program aimed to validate a new approach to solar farm construction that could make it faster, safer, and more efficient.
Hyperflex is a temporary mobile factory that automates the manufacturing, transportation, and installation of the torque tube, transversal beam, and PV module in a single, streamlined operation. By collapsing multiple steps of solar farm assembly into a fluid and highly automated workflow, Hyperflex allows EDP to gain centralized control of the entire process while creating a new, KM 0 logistics flow directly in the field.
Fitted with Comau robotics, Artificial Intelligence, caterpillar tracks and Comau’s patented lifting equipment, Hyperflex improves the photovoltaic value chain at a plant level. Its optimized mix of manual and automated processes, during which human operators work alongside the robot in complete safety thanks to advanced laser scanning techniques, facilitates EDP’s green energy production while improving the operators’ working conditions. The in-field operators also play a fundamental role in quality control and process management as part of the comprehensive solution. Finally, because the entire system is housed within a semi-trailer, it is highly mobile and can be easily deployed in different geographic locations and during diverse atmospheric conditions.
Although the trial’s primary goal was to verify Comau’s capability to automate solar tracker assembly and installation while improving project timelines and logistics efficiency, protecting worker safety, ensuring zero work-related incidents, and maintaining high overall installation quality were equally important criteria. Here, Comau’s MATE-XT wearable exoskeletons were used to improve the ergonomics and precision of manual tasks such as the tightening of overhead bolts. Lightweight and highly breathable, MATE-XT supports the operator’s upper body movements while executing repetitive overhead tasks, thus helping reduce fatigue and increase the quality of manual operations. The only EAWS-certified exoskeleton for effectively lowering the biomechanical risk for workers, MATE-XT reduces shoulder muscle activity by 30% while also reducing the perceived effort felt by workers. This, in turn, can help workers increase accuracy during overhead tasks as well as their execution speed, by up to 27% and 10%, respectively.
Looking to validate the Hyperflex system for future large-scale deployment, Comau and EDP engineers carefully monitored performance metrics, operational reliability, and ease of use. They found that the on-site manufacturing and installation successfully eliminated the logistical complexities of transporting pre-assembled solar components from a remote facility. This ultimately translates to reduced lead times, enabling real-time adjustments based on site conditions, and lower overall costs. Beyond the efficiency and cost-saving potential, Comau’s solution improved worker safety and ergonomics. Manual solar panel installation involves physically demanding, repetitive tasks, which can lead to musculoskeletal injuries, fatigue, and other health issues. Hyperflex is designed to minimize these risks by automating the most strenuous aspects of the process. To further enhance worker well-being, integrating MATE-XT has provided passive mechanical support for the workers’ shoulders and arms, reducing muscle fatigue and reducing the risk of repetitive strain injuries. MATE-XT also allows operators to maintain their performance levels over extended periods while benefiting from greater comfort and reduced physical exertion.
One of the most significant outcomes of the collaboration, in addition to the productivity benefits, is that there have been zero work-related incidents and zero quality defects with Hyperflex, highlighting the precision and reliability of the automated assembly process. Furthermore, the combination of mobile robotics and ergonomic support technologies has helped create a working environment that prioritizes both efficiency and worker well-being, representing a universal objective for industrial-scale solar farm construction.
From an economic and environmental perspective, Hyperflex can help EDP reduce the cost and time required to deploy solar farms by optimizing the labor-intensive aspects of their construction, reducing logistical expenses, as well as improving overall process efficiency. Additionally, automated installation helps reduce waste, minimize resource consumption, and ensures a more sustainable and scalable approach to expansion of renewable energy.
The successful deployment of Hyperflex in EDP’s Valladolid solar park represents an important milestone in making clean energy more accessible. The comprehensive solution has allowed companies to validate a new paradigm in automated solar farm construction with zero work-related incidents, zero quality defects, and solid efficiency improvements. This important milestone will allow them to refine the system, enhance its process optimization capabilities, and expand its deployment to larger solar farms within Europe and beyond.
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Abu Dhabi’s Department of Energy Links Clean Power to Investment Appeal  energynews.pro
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Tandem PV Selected for ARPA-E SCALEUP Ready Award to Accelerate American Solar Manufacturing  Business Wire
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More than 51,000 households around the state have already subscribed to the program.
Photo Credit: iStock
A landfill in New Jersey is getting a second life as a source of cheaper, cleaner electricity.
The capped landfill in Voorhees Township will be transformed into a community solar farm, a power source for households that otherwise might not be able to benefit from rooftop panels.
According to The Philadelphia Inquirer, there will soon be a 13.5-acre solar installation on the 35-acre former landfill along Centennial Boulevard, making it part of New Jersey’s fast-growing Community Solar Energy Program.
Community solar programs like this one give renters, apartment residents, and homeowners with shaded or unsuitable roofs a way to tap into solar energy without installing panels of their own. Eligible households subscribe to a shared project and receive credits that can reduce their electric bills. 
Often, states will set up community solar programs so that low-income households can benefit the most, sometimes guaranteeing utility bill savings. 
In an email to The Inquirer, Sawyer Morgan, program manager for New Jersey’s Community Solar Energy Program, confirmed that the state sets aside most of the program’s renewable power for low- and moderate-income households.
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Morgan also told The Inquirer that more than 51,000 households around the state have already subscribed to the program, which has generated over $18 million in net savings since its first projects went live in 2021.
New Jersey now has 209 community solar projects with a combined capacity of 291 megawatts, according to the Inquirer. The state plans to develop nearly 400 more projects, as well, adding roughly 700 megawatts of capacity.
Community solar generates savings for households that have been shut out of rooftop solar, especially families on tighter budgets. Rather than relying only on private rooftops, developers are using unused and out-of-the-way locations to expand access to clean energy.
As Morgan put it to the Inquirer, “These projects are all on rooftops, canopies, landfills, contaminated sites, mining sites, and certain bodies of water as floating solar.”
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