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Battery technology is often associated with the material bottleneck issue: A stringent transition to highly renewable energy systems in combination with high electrification would require large capacities for battery storage, both stationary and mobile, for which there is not enough Lithium available. Lithium criticality is, indeed, an important topic, while previous research has found that well-established recycling, vehicle-to-grid (V2G), and transport with low Lithium intensity (non-battery electric) would be required.
A recent study took a closer look at one of the most promising alternatives to Lithium-ion batteries (LIB) on the horizon: Sodium-ion batteries (SIB). Contrary to LIBs, SIBs are based on abundant raw materials, also beyond the cathode material: Anodes can be made of hard carbon instead of natural graphite, and copper as a current collector at the anode can be substituted with the more available and cheaper aluminum.
Previous energy system simulations resulted in close to 75 TWh_cap stationary battery demand by 2050, while an estimation for mobile batteries revealed a dominating role of moving batteries at up to almost 275 TWh_cap by mid-century. Latest findings indicate a ratio of needed battery capacity to installed solar PV capacity of about 0.8 kWh_cap/kW in a cost-optimized and flexible global energy system that is run entirely on renewable energy. Adding the niche of electronics and other applications, the total battery demand may reach over 350 TWh_cap by 2050.
The bottom-up, cell-level to system-level cost assessment showed that SIBs are already close to cost parity with their Lithium counterpart. In 2025, system-level costs were estimated to be ca. €120 /kWh_cap. By applying different learning rates, costs may be reduced until 2050 to a range of €28.5-51.9 /kWh_cap. This allows for the conclusion that batteries are ruled out as a bottleneck because of raw material limitations, but also for cost reasons. Furthermore, SIBs as a drop-in technology can be easily produced on existing production lines set up originally for LIBs.
Solar PV prosumers, an actors who are both producers and consumers of electricity, do not necessarily require batteries to have a secure electricity supply. Using the connection to the electricity grid, surplus electricity from the rooftop PV system can be fed into the grid and reimbursed, and at times of low or no solar PV yield, electricity can be drawn from the grid. Increasing grid electricity prices and decreasing battery costs, however, may make it economically beneficial to equip the prosumer system with a battery to optimize the overall supply cost of energy.
An initial study on the cost-optimization of solar PV prosumers has already shown that PV-battery systems for prosumers are widely beneficial in terms of the total cost of energy supply. Key is the electrification of the heat supply via heating rods or heat pumps. Very low-cost solar PV is no limitation, even though residential rooftop PV yields ca. 18% less electricity than ground-mounted systems. The combination with stationary battery storage enables high demand and heat cover ratios globally. Battery capacity optimization depends on the inclusion of electric vehicles (EV). High benefits have been found for cars that can supply the system with electricity, so-called vehicle-to-home (V2H).
In a follow-up study, it has been investigated whether a seasonal hydrogen storage is beneficial for residential PV prosumer systems. The long-term storage option has been found to play only a niche role for Nordic countries in an off-grid scenario, even with a significant cost reduction potential. With the updated optimization model, it has been shown that most of the regions will reach grid parity by 2035, with more than half of the regions having reached parity already in 2020. The improved optimization model confirmed that batteries play an important role. For the on-grid cases, a maximum battery-to-PV ratio of 1.6-1.8 kWh_cap/kW has been found. In off-grid cases, this ratio increases to 3-4 kWh_cap/kW.
The EV fleet is growing fast around the world, already accumulating battery capacity on the terawatt-hour scale and driving solar PV capacity demand. Using this battery capacity for power system balancing is a promising solution for energy systems with a growing share of variable renewable electricity generation. Smart charging alone provides valuable flexibility by increasing electricity consumption during renewable electricity generation peaks and reducing it during periods of generation deficit. V2G goes a step further, turning EVs into distributed battery storage on wheels that can supply electricity to the grid during deficit periods.
A study analyzing the impact of smart charging and V2G confirmed substantial benefits for the energy system. These technologies allow the system to reduce installed utility-scale battery storage capacity by about 50%, which indirectly reduces critical material use in batteries and also lowers the need for other energy storage technologies. Enabling these two technologies alone may reduce the total annual system costs by about 4%.
However, V2G cannot be free for the system: EV owners must be incentivized to participate and compensated for battery wear. The role and impact of V2G will depend strongly on the cost of this service to the system, but even at €50-100 /MWh, V2G still provides benefits for the system. The main challenge for V2G is the public infrastructure needed for EVs to charge or feed high-quality AC power into the grid whenever they are parked, especially during the midday PV generation peak, when additional storage capacity is most valuable.
Flexibility is needed to mitigate the variability of renewable energy sources arising from their weather-dependent nature. Battery energy storage systems have gained widespread attention as a potential leading technology for this role. Their advantages include high energy density, rapid response, reliable power delivery, sustained discharge capability, and geographical independence.
The continued reduction in battery manufacturing costs has further strengthened the role of battery storage in facilitating renewable energy integration, particularly for solar PV. A comprehensive review of flexibility options in over 1000 research articles found that compared with other storage technologies, including pumped hydro energy storage, thermal energy storage, and e-hydrogen storage, battery technologies currently offer an attractive combination of rapid response, modularity, efficiency, and technological maturity. Nevertheless, one should not regard batteries and pumped hydro energy storage as substitutes but as complements to serve the same need, as also highlighted in the case of India.
A key factor underpinning the attractiveness of battery technology as a flexibility option is the sustained reduction in battery costs, despite fluctuations in raw material prices. Moreover, this cost reduction has been observed across both mobile and stationary applications, highlighting the versatility and improving cost competitiveness of battery technologies across a wide range of applications.
This technological advancement, driven by continued innovation, is expected to play a significant role in accelerating the deployment of solar PV across the global Sunbelt and other regions, such as Africa, and in particular also for off-grid applications. The rise of solar PV would not be thinkable without electricity storage and in particular battery storage, as shown in a recent analysis in major milestones for solar PV in energy transition scenarios which also led a projected primary energy supply share of solar PV of about 61% in energy transition studies on a global average by mid-century. Overall, solar PV is expected to play a major role also outside of the Sunbelt. In smaller and isolated grids, such as islands and off-grid systems, rising diesel fuel costs, combined with the rapid decline in the costs of renewable energy technologies, have increased the competitiveness of renewable energy sources and enhanced the relevance of battery-based energy storage solutions. This trend is driving the increasing adoption of off-grid and decentralized autonomous power systems, including PV-battery and wind-battery configurations.
Authors: Dominik Keiner, Siavash Khalili, Dmitrii Bogdanov, and Christian Breyer
This article is part of a monthly column by the LUT University.
Research at LUT University encompasses various analyses related to power, heat, transport, industry, desalination, and negative CO₂ emission options. Power-to-X research is a core topic at the university, integrated into the focus areas of Planetary Resources, Business and Society, Digital Revolution, and Energy Transition. Solar energy plays a key role in all research aspects.
The views and opinions expressed in this article are the author’s own, and do not necessarily reflect those held by pv magazine.
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Swiss consultancy Pexapark’s EURO Composite Index rose 5% in September, driven by higher forward electricity prices across most European markets. Rising gas prices pushed up power purchase agreement (PPA) fair values, although calibration adjustments also contributed to the increase.
Great Britain recorded the largest monthly increase, at 10.9%, followed by Italy and Poland (6.9% each), the Nordic countries (4.3%) and the Netherlands (4.1%). Germany and France posted increases of 3.6% and 3.1%, respectively. The Iberian Peninsula was the exception, with PPA prices falling 3.5% in Spain and 1.4% in Portugal.
Pexapark also recalibrated PPA fair values in Denmark after buyers increased the risk discounts applied to their pricing. The adjustment reduced 10-year baseload values for contracts starting in 2028 by approximately €5 ($5.6)/MWh, although an upward revision to capture curves partially offset the impact on pay-as-produced PPAs.
In Poland, an update to the hourly forward price curve increased the additional value available to solar PPAs paired with battery energy storage systems (BESS).
PPA contracting activity recovered after the summer slowdown. A total of 25 agreements representing approximately 1.2 GW of announced capacity were disclosed in September, compared with 14 contracts totaling 335 MW in August.
Corporate buyers accounted for 21 agreements and nearly 1.1 GW, representing 92% of the announced capacity. One of the largest deals was Google’s 22-year, 507 MW agreement supporting the extension of operations at Finland’s Loviisa nuclear power plant.
Onshore wind slightly exceeded solar PV in contracted capacity, with 281 MW and 276 MW, respectively. Solar projects paired with BESS accounted for an additional 167 MW.
Italy led in the number of agreements, with seven deals, including six small-scale, on-site self-consumption PPAs and Amazon’s virtual PPA covering 156 MW of capacity at the Big Fish agrivoltaic project in Sicily.
Flexible power agreements (FPAs) also gained momentum in September, with 16 deals announced across Europe, representing approximately 2.1 GW and 4.7 GWh of contracted capacity. This was more than double the 869 MW and 2.4 GWh recorded in August.
Four tolling agreements accounted for 925 MW, including a 10-year, 400 MW contract between Statkraft and Greenvolt, described as the first of its kind announced in Poland.
Agreements featuring revenue floors and profit-sharing mechanisms covered 548 MW, while merchant structures with revenue sharing accounted for just 80 MW, indicating a growing preference for revenue hedging.
Hybrid PPAs also gained traction, with three agreements announced in September, the highest monthly total to date. The third quarter also marked a record for these structures.
Zelestra signed a hybrid PPA with German steelmaker Salzgitter covering electricity from 147 MW of solar capacity and a 79 MW/237 MWh battery system charged exclusively by the solar plants. The agreement reflects growing interest among industrial electricity consumers in using storage to provide a more reliable renewable energy supply.
Other notable deals included Statkraft’s agreement with Wattmanufactur in Germany and Shell’s PPA for Abei Energy’s Arcos de la Frontera project in Spain. Both involve structures combining solar generation with storage optimization.
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First Solar Climbs 4% as Truist Buy Call and December Tariff Floor Reset Panel Pricing Outlook; Enphase Energy and Sunrun Hold Flat  AOL.com
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China’s Leapting, a developer of robotic automation solutions for the PV industry, has unveiled a new autonomous forklift for utility-scale solar construction sites.
Dubbed Auto-Navigation Forklift Robot (AFR), the system can transport pallets of solar modules weighing up to 3,000 kg from laydown yards to installation rows without a human operator.
“The AFR combines GPS-RTK, laser-based simultaneous localization and mapping (SLAM), and 3D computer vision to locate pallets, identify fork-hole coordinates in real time, and auto-plan insertion paths,” the company said in a statement. “It further features 360-degree multi-line LiDAR, intelligent obstacle avoidance, and a three-tier braking system.”
The navigation system combines high-precision GNSS-RTK positioning with SLAM for local perception and positioning corrections. According to the manufacturer, the system can identify pallet locations, orientation angles and the three-dimensional coordinates of fork openings in real time. It then automatically calculates insertion and extraction paths and adjusts the mast and forks for pallet handling.
The company said the system can also detect whether pallets contain materials and recognize common pallet standards, including European EUR/EPAL and Japanese JIS specifications.
The AFR measures 4.8 m × 1.8 m × 2.15 m and weighs 5,500 kg. It has a standard load center distance of 600 mm and a maximum lifting height of 3 m. Its two-stage, full-free-lift mast features laterally adjustable forks for precise pallet alignment, the company said.
The forklift uses a tracked chassis with two independently driven 4 kW motors. It reaches a maximum speed of 3 km/h when fully loaded and 4 km/h when unloaded, with adjustable driving speeds. Differential track steering allows the machine to rotate on the spot.
“High-strength engineering-grade steel tracks, with low ground contact pressure, are suitable for diverse complex road conditions and provide stable loads,” the company said.
According to the technical datasheet, the AFR can negotiate gradients of at least 30 degrees on hard surfaces and has a maximum wading depth of 0.3 m. It also supports a maximum forward inclination angle of 4 degrees and a maximum pitch angle of 11 degrees. The manufacturer said the machine is suitable for hard roads, desert terrain, gravel surfaces and lightly uneven or muddy ground.
The AFR is powered by a 48 V, 400 Ah lithium battery, providing a nominal energy capacity of 19.2 kWh and at least eight hours of operation under standard conditions. It supports automatic charging and manual fast charging, with AC 220 V and AC 380 V charging connections. In addition to fully autonomous operation, users can select semi-automatic or manual remote-control modes.
For safety, the forklift incorporates multi-line LiDAR sensors for 360-degree obstacle detection, along with audible and visual warnings. Its three-tier braking system combines electronic, mechanical and parking brakes. Emergency stop buttons are installed at several points on the vehicle exterior.
An integrated inertial measurement unit (IMU) continuously monitors the vehicle’s tilt angle and triggers an alarm and automatic stop if a preset threshold is exceeded.
The AFR offers an IP67 ingress protection rating, depending on the configuration. The company specifies an operating temperature range of -10 C to 50 C and a storage temperature range of -20 C to 60 C.
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Researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) have found that renewable portfolio standards (RPS) and utility-scale renewables are not associated with higher residential electricity prices in the United States, while rooftop solar is associated with higher prices.
Fischer J. Espiritu Argosino and Christopher R. Knittel of the MIT Center for Energy and Environmental Policy Research (CEEPR) built a state-utility panel covering 1998 to 2023. It links residential prices, RPS stringency, generation mixes and utility spending, using data from the US Energy Information Administration (EIA), the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) and Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBNL).
“Using a two way fixed effects regression model that controls for unobserved differences across years and between states, we find that RPSs and utility scale renewables are not associated with higher residential electricity prices,” the researchers said in a summary of the paper. “Instead, RPSs have virtually zero impact on prices and utility scale renewables are modestly associated with lower prices; in particular, utility-scale solar is strongly linked with lower prices.”
Based on the paper’s regression coefficients, which measure generation shares relative to coal, a 10-percentage-point rise in utility-scale solar’s share of generation is associated with residential prices just over 8% lower. A 5-percentage-point rise in rooftop solar’s share is associated with prices roughly 16% higher. The authors cautioned that the results are correlations and said further work will apply “more rigorous econometric techniques to further strengthen the causal interpretation of these estimates.”
“One explanation is that large solar plants may reduce network congestion and place downward pressure on overall generation costs because they do not require fuel inputs,” the researchers said. A second model, which also controls for differences between utilities, found utility-scale solar strongly associated with lower transmission, distribution and total operation and maintenance (O&M) costs.
The researchers suggested tariff design may partly explain the rooftop solar result.
“One possible reason for this is that current rate structures in some states shift fixed costs associated with rooftop solar from the owners onto other ratepayers,” they said. “In effect, this means that those without rooftop solar often fund those who do through an additional volumetric rate.”
Distribution strain
Rooftop solar was also strongly correlated with higher distribution O&M costs.
“One reason for this is that the distribution network was not designed for bidirectional power flows,” the researchers said.
CEEPR does not peer-review working papers before posting them.
“Policymakers can secure an affordable energy future by improving the integration of low-cost renewables while implementing more equitable cost recovery strategies,” the researchers said.
A June 2025 LBNL study led by Ryan Wiser reached a similar conclusion on utility-scale renewables. It found that the roughly 75% of US utility-scale wind and solar built outside RPS programs had no broadly discernible upward effect on retail prices.
The rooftop solar finding feeds into a long-running dispute over cost-shifting in California. The California Public Utilities Commission’s Public Advocates Office has estimated an $8.5 billion cost shift from rooftop solar customers to other ratepayers. A 2025 report by M.Cubed Consulting and the California Solar and Storage Association found instead that rooftop solar delivered a $1.5 billion net benefit to all California ratepayers. Solar advocates have also argued that rising transmission and distribution spending is a larger driver of rate increases.
The researchers described their findings in “Renewables and Electricity Affordability: Untangling Correlation from Causation,” published as MIT CEEPR Working Paper 2025-22.
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Thursday, October 29, 2026
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Thursday, November 5, 2026
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The new issue of pv magazine Global is out now!
Available in print and digital – get your copy today!
pv magazine USA hosts its multi-day virtual event on U.S. solar and energy storage, covering domestic manufacturing, distributed energy and the growing role of solar-plus-storage in meeting AI-driven power demand.
pv magazine hosts its four-day virtual event on European solar and energy storage, exploring market opportunities, solar-plus-storage business cases, technical quality, and cybersecurity in the years ahead.
pv magazine Session returns to NetZero Milan as Knowledge Partner, organizing and moderating a two-hour conference on the evolving global solar supply chain.
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Outdoor and home backup storage maker Jackery has announced it is entering the smart electric trailer market, partnering with California-based Pebble, which makes travel trailers.
Jackery will deliver new custom solar panels and connections that add power to the new 2027 Pebble Flow as an optional extra for buyers who want to add self-reliance through solar power. Together it’s dubbed an “all-new category of mobile off-grid energy”, while noting mobility freedom and power independence.
As for definitions, an RV is a recreational vehicle, a broad term for any motor vehicle or trailer equipped with a place to stay, cook, and live, usually for travel and camping. Defining it further, a trailer can be an RV, though not all RVs are trailers!
In the new Pebble Flow, when parked and deployed, the system delivers approximately 2 kW of additional solar input. The panels connect directly to Pebble Flow’s all-electric microgrid, which pairs a 45 kWh LFP battery with up to 4 kW of combined solar input and up to 12 kW of power export to a home, another RV or an electric tow vehicle.
In response to questions, Jackery confirmed to ESS News that it doesn’t supply the 45 kWh battery, but the new solar add-on setup.
“We didn’t want to just put two logos on a product,” said Bingrui Yang, CEO and founder of Pebble. “Jackery has spent years building portable power that people count on, both at home and outdoors. Their solar panels connect straight into Pebble Flow’s own energy system, so travelers get the same steady, easy-to-use power on the road that they have at home. That’s the idea behind Jackery’s ‘Home on the Road, Power on the Go.’”
Specs and options
In terms of the new Pebble, the Jackery-based add-in is a $4,000 extra for the 2027 Pebble Flow’s ‘Founder Edition’ of the trailer, and goes on top of a list price of $189,000.
The setup includes four high-efficiency 500W solar panels, four matching 3-meter solar extension cables and a four-in-one solar connection junction.
Other configurations are available. Self-Powered Package hardware is expected to begin shipping in December 2026.
From ESS News

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ESTEVAN, Sask. — The new Turning Sun Solar facility southwest of Estevan has reached one milestone and another is expected to occur shortly, despite some weather delays in the late summer and early fall.
Devin Petteplace, director of corporate affairs for Greenwood Sustainable Infrastructure LLC, said one of them is the construction of what he called "the Golden Row," which is the first completed row of panels at a solar farm. The vast majority of the solar power modules were on site as of the end of September.
The main power transformer is expected to be in place in the next month or so, he said.
"That's an extremely large milestone and checkpoint for the project's electrical setup," he said.
While precipitation has caused some delays, particularly in the late summer and early fall when the Estevan area received more rain than normal, the project is still scheduled to be completed in the fourth quarter of 2027. Weather has remained the biggest impediment to construction, he said.
"They continue to progress, but certainly weather makes for shorter days on site if the ground is extremely wet, so that's certainly been the biggest challenge to date."
Approximately 100 workers are currently at the site, which is approaching the expected peak of 150 during construction. Petteplace said the goal will be to complete as much work as possible on tasks that require digging and warmer conditions.
During the winter months, the construction crews will work on the elements that the weather will permit, he said, and then meet the key milestones on the project leading up to the 2027 commercial operation date.
The 100-megawatt Turning Sun Solar project is among the largest solar facilities in the province to date. Turning Sun is a partnership between Greenwood Sustainable Infrastructure and Ocean Man First Nation. Once complete, the facility will produce power equivalent to what's needed for an average of 25,000 homes.
Construction on the project started in the spring and a groundbreaking ceremony was held in June.
 
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Smaller expansions do not always get the same economies of scale as larger installs.
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Even after spending $41,000 on a sizable solar system, one homeowner with a hot tub and multiple EVs found the production still did not fully meet their household’s energy needs. 
For advice on how best to expand their system, the homeowner turned to Reddit. 
In a post on r/solar, the homeowner said their 18.8-kilowatt array uses REC Alpha 460 panels and Enphase Microinverters.
According to the original poster, the system “is producing what I expected, but it won’t produce enough to provide for all my needs.”
Want to go solar but not sure who to trust? EnergySage has your back with free and transparent quotes from fully vetted providers in your area.
To get started, just answer a few questions about your home — no phone number required. Within a day or two, EnergySage will email you the best options for your needs, and their expert advisers can help you compare quotes and pick a winner.
To close that gap, the OP is considering building a roof over their deck to house an additional 13 panels. 
With the previous installation costing $41,000, or exactly $1,000 per panel, the OP wanted to know whether the addition would cost roughly the same per kilowatt-hour.
Several Redditors cautioned that the addition’s cost would involve more than just the panels.
“You can add to this system but you’re going to have to rework the disconnect and combiner panel at the service location,” advised one. 
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To get started, just answer a few questions about your home — no phone number required. Within a day or two, EnergySage will email you the best local options for your needs, and their expert advisers can help you compare quotes and pick a winner.
Although going solar can seem complicated, it remains one of the best ways to save money on home energy. Anyone pricing a new installation or an add-on can try EnergySage to get free solar installation estimates and compare quotes.
The homeowner’s original math works out to about $2.18 per watt for the 18.8-kW system, based on the $41,000 price tag. If you use the same 460-watt panel size again, 13 more panels would add about 5.98 kW, making it a much smaller project than the first installation.
Smaller expansions do not always get the same economies of scale as larger installs. Design work, labor, permitting, and electrical changes can carry more weight in the final cost when they are spread across 13 panels instead of a 41-panel system.
This project also adds another factor many solar shoppers do not face during a first install: the homeowner is still deciding between a roof structure and a pergola over the deck. That means the final solar price could be influenced not only by panel and inverter work but also by where and how the new array would be mounted.
💡Go deep on the latest news and trends shaping the residential solar landscape
On top of that, if the existing equipment really does need disconnect or combiner changes, the homeowner may pay for system reconfiguration in addition to extra generating capacity.
When pricing a home solar installation, tools like EnergySage’s solar map show the average cost of a home solar panel system by state, along with details on solar panel incentives for each state. Together, those resources can help homeowners get the best price for rooftop solar panels and access available incentives.
EnergySage can be especially useful for a project like the OP’s because add-on systems can vary widely depending on electrical upgrades and mounting plans. With EnergySage’s help, homeowners can get a variety of installation quotes, saving the average person up to $10,000 on solar purchases and installations. For someone comparing a deck pergola build with a roof-mounted expansion, quote-shopping can make it easier to see whether the bill is driven by hardware, labor, or required rework.
Adding battery storage to a solar setup is also one of the best ways to protect your home during outages, save money on energy, and go off-grid. Homeowners already revisiting their system design can explore EnergySage for information on home battery storage options, including competitive installation estimates.
At its core, the Reddit post raises a question many solar owners eventually ask when a system falls short of total demand: “While I realize every system is different, is it likely that adding more panels costs per kW will remain about the same, more, or less?”
For anyone pricing an add-on, these stories take a closer look at the same solar cost questions, including how homeowners compare quotes, where incentives can still lower upfront bills, and why timing can matter.
• EnergySage says design, labor, and equipment often drive solar pricing more than panel counts.
• EnergySage experts helped 60,000 homeowners slash prices by $9,000 by comparing competing installer bids.
• A homeowner used federal incentives to secure $10,000 in incentives for a brand-new solar system.
Get TCD’s free newsletters for easy tips, smart advice, and a chance to earn $5,000 toward home upgrades. To see more stories like this one, change your Google preferences here.
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Researchers uncover promising light emission and unusual crystal structures that could advance future photonic devices.
Researchers have experimentally shown that chalcogenide perovskites can emit light more efficiently than previous measurements suggested, strengthening the case for investigating the materials for future solar cells, photodetectors, and other optoelectronic devices.
The team, led by Mirjana Dimitrievska at Switzerland’s Empa research institute, worked with researchers from the Helmholtz-Zentrum Berlin für Materialien und Energie and other partners. Their study examined barium zirconium sulfide, a chalcogenide perovskite whose light-emission properties Empa said researchers had not previously demonstrated experimentally.
The results also revealed a challenge. Although single crystals showed relatively strong light emission, defects introduced during synthesis and processing significantly suppressed the same property in thin films.
Perovskites are defined by their crystal structure rather than one particular chemical composition. While halide perovskites have received considerable attention for solar cells, chalcogenide perovskites are being investigated as alternatives because they combine potentially useful optical and electronic properties with greater material stability and constituent elements that are abundant in Earth’s crust.
The challenge has been establishing whether their predicted properties translate into measurable performance. Until now, Empa reports that the light-emission efficiency of chalcogenide perovskites has not been experimentally demonstrated.
To investigate the material, the researchers used advanced spectroscopic techniques to measure photoluminescence in a barium zirconium sulfide crystal produced at the Helmholtz-Zentrum Berlin. Photoluminescence occurs when a material absorbs energy and subsequently emits light. The findings were published in Advanced Optical Materials.
The measurements showed relatively strong emission from the single crystal, consistent with theoretical predictions. Thin films, however, exhibited substantially weaker photoluminescence. This difference matters because promising materials must eventually be synthesized and processed into practical device structures. 
Defects introduced during those steps can disrupt the electronic processes needed for efficient light emission, potentially limiting a material’s performance even when its underlying crystal structure is favorable. The researchers’ findings therefore provide both a positive result and a development challenge: the material’s intrinsic potential appears promising, but manufacturing processes will need further refinement.
Researchers are investigating chalcogenide perovskites for applications including solar cells and photodetectors. Their stability and constituent elements could make them attractive candidates for optoelectronic technologies, although the research remains at an early stage.
The new measurements help researchers distinguish between limitations inherent to a material and those caused by synthesis or processing. Spectroscopic analysis can reveal whether poor performance stems from defects in the material itself or from other issues in a prototype device, helping guide subsequent improvements.
Empa emphasized that considerable development remains before chalcogenide perovskites are ready for practical applications. The results show promising light emission in single crystals, not a commercially viable solar cell or a proven improvement in solar-conversion efficiency.
The researchers are also investigating a second development emerging from the synthesis process. When chalcogenide perovskites are produced from their constituent elements, tiny needle-like structures with hexagonal cross-sections can form alongside the desired crystalline material.
Previously considered an undesirable byproduct, these structures have displayed unusual optical properties, including the ability to polarize, refract, and conduct light in distinctive ways. They may also have potential as superconductors and quantum materials.
With support from the Swiss National Science Foundation through its international Weave program, Dimitrievska’s team is collaborating with Friedrich-Alexander University Erlangen-Nürnberg in Germany to investigate these structures, improve their synthesis, and better understand their properties.
The researchers ultimately aim to integrate the needle-like materials into initial photonic and electronic components. Together, the two research directions show how a deeper understanding of material behavior can open new possibilities in optoelectronics. 
Chalcogenide perovskites still face substantial engineering challenges, but experimentally confirming their light-emission properties provides a stronger foundation for deciding where further development may be worthwhile.
Kaif Shaikh is a journalist and writer passionate about turning complex information into clear, impactful stories. His writing covers technology, sustainability, geopolitics, and occasionally fiction. A graduate in Journalism and Mass Communication, his work has appeared in the Times of India and beyond. After a near-fatal experience, Kaif began seeing both stories and silences differently. Outside work, he juggles far too many projects and passions, but always makes time to read, reflect, and hold onto the thread of wonder.
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Whenever the OP has attempted to capture a video, the error “never shows up.”
Photo Credit: Reddit
A Jackery Home Power 3000 owner said an intermittent F6 AC error turned a backup-battery purchase into a warranty dispute, with support initially asking for video proof that the owner could not provide. 
The complaint appeared to strike a chord with other shoppers in the brand’s Reddit community.
In a thread on Reddit‘s r/jackery, the original poster explained that their Home Power 3000 would sometimes display the F6 warning. They contacted Jackery customer support for assistance, but that’s when the trouble really started. 
According to the OP, they initially provided a screenshot of the Jackery app showing the error. However, Jackery customer service told them they had to provide a video of the F6 warning on the device itself. 
Whenever the OP has attempted to capture a video, the error “never shows up.”
Frustrated, the owner questioned whether the extended warranty they had purchased was a total waste of money. 
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“I really like my Jackery,” the OP said. But they also wondered, “If I can’t get this fixed then what is the point in keeping it and not going to a competitor battery company.”
Commenters shared the OP’s trepidation. 
“These type of posts are making me nervous,” said one, adding that they had been considering buying multiple generators and panels from the brand but were concerned by other users’ negative experiences. 
Before long, Jackery’s U.S. account joined the discussion and told the owner that “the video you shared below is perfect for our tech and customer support team’s reference.”
Later the OP provided an update saying that Jackery had agreed to replace the unit and that they had received a shipping label to do so. 
One commenter pointed to a possible cause outside the unit itself, saying they had the same F6 issue and “replaced the wall outlet and all was fine.”
Elsewhere in the thread, a user said that one of their two 3000 units had the F6 issue and was replaced under warranty after troubleshooting.
Other users said the choice of seller could make a difference, too. For one, they felt that purchasing their unit at Costco had given them at least “some level of recourse.”
For many buyers, the appeal of a battery backup is fairly straightforward: It can keep low-watt household technology online during an outage without relying on a fuel-burning generator. However, this all depends on the battery functioning properly when it is needed most. 
For a wider look at backup power, portable energy gear, and whether added coverage pays off, these stories dig into similar issues. They cover EV warranty support, whole-home battery experiences, battery financing options, portable solar used for charging, and one homeowner’s choice to skip battery storage.
• Ambercare launched a new EV warranty program to ease Tesla owners’ fears over costly repairs.
• On Reddit, homeowners said full-home battery backups kept essentials running through outages with little disruption.
• SunPower and Palmetto started financing home backup batteries so more households could avoid upfront costs.
• One homeowner used portable panels to cover EV charging instead of paying for a larger solar upgrade.
• After going solar, one homeowner found an EV charger worked fine without adding a battery.
Get TCD’s free newsletters for easy tips, smart advice, and a chance to earn $5,000 toward home upgrades. To see more stories like this one, change your Google preferences here.
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By David Drucker
October 13, 2026 at 3:00pm
A U.S. soldier may carry up to 20 pounds of batteries to power communications equipment and other electronics on missions. New research from FIU could help lighten that load.
Backed by a $10 million grant from the Department of War, a team of FIU engineers has developed a dual-use, razor-thin solar device that can harvest sunlight to generate electricity and then also produce light.
This innovation, which the researchers call “SOLED” — half solar panel, half light-emitting diode (LED) — is well-suited for wearable power systems and could be stitched onto a soldier’s uniform or gear, giving troops working in remote locations a stealthy way to generate power without the noise, heat or bulk of a generator. It could also enable new kinds of displays, sensors and other optoelectronic devices, giving warfighters greater flexibility in a contested logistics environment when supply routes are threatened. The work was published in the journal NanoEnergy.
“When you can turn sunlight into power and then use that same panel to produce light, you’re potentially reducing a dependency on batteries, on generators and on resupply,” said Daniela Radu, lead researcher and FIU College of Engineering & Computing mechanical and materials engineering interim chair. “This is how we can increase energy resilience at the level of individual soldiers.”
The device is built with a versatile semiconductor material, called perovskite, that converts sunlight to electricity at up to 22% efficiency, competitive with commercial solar technology. Run in reverse, it can emit light at nearly 11% efficiency, a significant jump over earlier versions of the technology, the research team says.
The light itself isn’t bright to the naked eye. With peak emission at 818 nanometers, just past the edge of visible light, it appears as a pink glow. But that’s still useful: night-vision sensors, biometric scanners and medical imaging equipment all read wavelengths like this one. The team is currently working to make the panels visibly brighter.
This research grows out of the broader Department of War grant focused on resilient, quiet energy for troops in the field.
Radu leads the Center of Excellence for Integrated Resilient Energy and Energy Storage (CIREES), established with the $10 million investment from the Department of War. FIU leads this multiyear project, which includes collaborators from Pennsylvania State University, toward finding new energy solutions that support DoW’s strategic commitment to making warfighter energy resilience a national security priority.
Next, the researchers are working to make the technology at larger sizes.
While this is a difficult task because the panel is multi-layered and thin, the team has steadily scaled without issue so far, says Neetesh Kumar, an FIU assistant research professor and lead author on the study.
A 1.1-square-centimeter device maintained a power-conversion efficiency of more than 20%, showing that the technology can perform beyond the smallest lab samples. 
”Most solar cells made of these materials are tested at around 0.1 square centimeters in the research phase, because that’s what standard lab equipment is built for,” Kumar said. ”We pushed ours to 1.1 and then 2.1 square centimeters and still saw strong performance. Our next goal is to keep scaling toward panel sizes that can go in a product.”
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Abstract:
This study evaluates the techno-economic performance of hybrid PV–CSP power plants using high-temperature particle receivers and compares them directly with molten salt-based alternatives, with all systems integrated into supercritical CO2 (sCO2) Brayton power blocks. A unified simulation and optimization framework is applied to quantify the cost and performance potential of particle-based CSP when combined with PV and long-duration thermal storage. For a representative 10 MWe plant located in Évora (Portugal), particle hybrid PV–CSP– sCO2 systems achieve minimum LCOE of 72 EUR/MWh at capacity factors near 80%, demonstrating that particle-based systems can enable competitive firm renewable electricity at small scale. Results show that sCO2 cycle layouts including intercooling only can match the techno-economic performance of more advanced configurations because their lower specific investment outweighs differences in thermal efficiency. Parallel electric-heater integration allows flexible TES charging and consistently outperforms EH in series arrangements, which require oversized PV capacities. Sensitivity analyses quantify the main impacts on the LCOE, driven by solar-field and power-block costs, whereas TES cost plays a secondary role. When the system is in a high-DNI location such as Likana (Chile), the minimum LCOE decreases by 20% and achievable capacity factors exceed 90%, with CSP becoming the dominant generation technology and eliminating the need for electric heating. System-level benchmarking against PV–BESS, molten salt tower and trough CSP, and PV-based electric-heater systems shows that particle hybrid PV–CSP– sCO2 plants consistently deliver the lowest LCOE at capacity factors above 60% at a competitive cost.
Salvatore Guccione, Rafael Guedez, Techno-economic comparative analysis of hybrid PV-CSP systems: particle vs. molten salt based layouts integrated with sCO2 power blocks, Solar Energy, Volume 318, 2026, 115061, ISSN 0038-092X, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.solener.2026.115061
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Solar Power World
By Kelly Pickerel | October 13, 2026
EcoFlow has released a new energy storage system, the Titan Series. The residential battery comes in three versions: 5000, 5000 Plus, and 5000 Classic.
The flagship of the lineup, Titan 5000 Plus, delivers 7.2 kW of output from a 5-kWh battery. Titan can scale up to 30 kWh.
Paired with the EcoFlow Smart Home Panel 10, Titan 5000 Plus and Titan 5000 works with the grid and can also integrate with existing third-party rooftop solar systems without replacing your main electric panel or enduring long installation delays. The system works to analyze the three power sources at once by prioritizing clean solar first, storing surplus energy in the battery second and drawing expensive grid power only as a last resort.
The Titan Series removes complexity and high contractor costs traditionally tied to home energy upgrades. Paired with Smart Home Panel 10, the ecosystem supports 50-A whole-home current across 10 circuits without replacing any existing electrical panel or rooftop solar setup. During a blackout, the system switches to battery power in under 20 milliseconds, maintaining seamless power to everything from Wi-Fi routers to water pumps, all monitored and managed directly through the EcoFlow App.
EcoFlow pre-assembles breakers and pre-wires cables before shipping. This factory-level prep work reduces field labor by up to 80% and speeds up installation.
“Whole-home backup has traditionally required households to choose between the power they want and the cost and complexity they’re willing to take on,” said Brian Essenmacher, Head of U.S. Business Development at EcoFlow. “With Titan, we’re giving more families a practical way to get the power they need, while also helping them manage energy more intelligently every day.”
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Kelly Pickerel has more than 15 years of experience reporting on the U.S. solar industry and is currently editor in chief of Solar Power World.

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A Truist upgrade and a December trade decision are pulling First Solar in one direction while the rest of the solar sector barely budges, and the reason why splits the group into a set of clear winners and losers.
Market Movers desk. Editor: David Moadel.

Tariff policy is splitting the solar group into winners and losers. First Solar (NASDAQ:FSLR | FSLR Price Prediction) stock is up 4% to $186.21 this afternoon. The gain follows a Truist Securities upgrade and a Section 232 trade decision that sets a floor under imported panel pricing.
First Solar stock is still down 29% year to date despite the rally, so the move starts from a low base. Sector-wide strength looks far narrower than that headline gain. Over in the solar fund space, the Invesco Solar ETF (NYSEARCA:TAN) is up 1%, indicating a much smaller advance than the one in First Solar stock.
The broad-market tone is softer, as the SPDR S&P 500 ETF Trust (NYSEARCA:SPY) is down by only 0.2%. Meanwhile, Enphase Energy (NASDAQ:ENPH) stock is at $31.42, down just 0.2% but also trailing First Solar stock today. At the same time, Sunrun (NASDAQ:RUN) stock trades at $7.61, up 0.3%, marking just a fraction of FSLR stock’s gain.
Truist Securities analyst Christopher Souther upgraded First Solar stock to Buy from Hold in the prior session and raised his price target to $270, citing “a stronger backdrop for pricing into the 2030s and a recent valuation reset.” Souther also lifted his estimate for U.S. module average selling prices at the end of the decade, along with his revenue and EBITDA forecasts for that period. He argued that First Solar can stay competitive against domestic crystalline silicon manufacturing on a lower cost base per watt, excluding tax credits.
The U.S. Department of Commerce’s Section 232 trade decision takes effect in early December and sets a minimum import price plus tariffs of 44 cents a watt on foreign crystalline silicon modules. A separate Commerce Department rule restricts foreign suppliers from stocking modules ahead of that date. Timing is the catch, since Souther said First Solar’s backlog has largely set its near-term pricing, with its U.S. Series 7 capacity sold out through 2028, so the benefit may show up later, in bookings for the end of the decade.
First Solar manufactures thin-film modules in the U.S. and sells them to utility-scale developers under multi-year contracts. An import price floor on crystalline silicon panels reaches that business directly, because it sets a minimum on what rival foreign modules can cost. Its thin-film cadmium telluride technology also keeps it independent from Chinese crystalline silicon supply chains.
Enphase makes microinverters, and Sunrun installs and finances rooftop systems. Neither manufactures the modules the tariff decision prices, matching the split in trading. Enphase bulls cite its push into AI data center power equipment; bears point to falling revenue amid a residential slump. Sunrun bulls note record storage attachment, while bears flag its cut full-year guidance and slower subscriber additions.
The bull case for First Solar holds that a floor under imported panels protects its pricing over a multiyear stretch, which is the argument behind the upgrade. Supporters can point to First Solar stock trading at a forward P/E ratio of 8x as backing for the valuation reset Souther noted. A domestic fleet with little open capacity strengthens First Solar’s hand when it negotiates bookings for later years.
Skeptics see the same order book as the weak spot. With near-term pricing already locked in, the benefit sits years out, leaving room for enthusiasm to cool before higher-priced contracts reach reported results.
The question now is whether First Solar stock holds its gain into the close and whether other analysts follow Truist. New contract announcements showing pricing could test Souther’s end-of-decade thesis ahead of any revenue impact.
Since the tariff benefit sits years out, investors may want to adjust their First Solar stock holdings with that delay in mind and limit their exposure to installers that gain little from the floor.
Contact [email protected] for any questions or corrections.
David Moadel is financial writer specializing in stocks, ETFs, options, precious metals, and Bitcoin. David has written well over 1,000 articles for leading online publications, helping investors understand markets, income strategies, and risk.His work has appeared in The Motley Fool, InvestorPlace, U.S. News & World Report, TipRanks, ValueWalk, Benzinga, Market Realist, TalkMarkets, Finmasters, 24/7 Wall St., and others.With a master’s degree in education, David has taught at the elementary, high school, and college levels. That teaching background shapes his writing style: clear, educational, and practical. David has also built a loyal social-media audience by providing trustworthy financial content on YouTube, X/Twitter, and StockTwits.
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What if solar panels on FedEx warehouses and shipping centers powered its 2,000 new all-electric trucks?
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October 13, 2026
As part of its effort to fully electrify its vehicle fleet by 2040, FedEx ordered 2,000 new all-electric trucks from electric vehicle startup Harbinger in a deal worth over $300 million. The trucks are expected to reduce FedEx’s carbon emissions by 1.7 million tons while saving $800 million in fuel costs over the life of the vehicles. 
Many of FedEx’s new electric trucks will travel between the many shipping centers, sorting facilities and other buildings that FedEx owns and operates. In fact, among FedEx’s 5,000 facilities in the United States are 10 large sorting & handling facilities and 680 FedEx Ground facilities. Combined, these facilities have more than 120 million combined square feet of rooftop space. If FedEx installed solar panels on its facilities, it could harness a lot of energy from the sun to power its fleet of electric vehicles.
“FedEx making good on its commitment to electrify its truck fleet demonstrates real climate leadership,” said Johanna Neumann, Senior Director of the Campaign for 100% Renewable Energy at Environment America Research & Policy Center. The shipping leader could supercharge the environmental benefits of this move by developing a plan to power these trucks with rooftop solar installed on its warehouses and sorting & handling facilities.”
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FedEx owns and operates more than 5,000 facilities with thousands of acres of rooftop space, but has not publicly announced a goal or plan to install solar on those roofs.
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TOWN OF WATERTOWN, New York (WWNY) – A state agency has approved a solar project spanning the towns of Watertown and Hounsfield, and residents are now organizing opposition ahead of a public hearing Wednesday.
About 800 acres of land surrounding Old Rome State Road will become a field of solar panels, an area equivalent to about 600 football fields.
Nearby homeowners are unsettled by the news.
“Had I been aware, I certainly would not have purchased a home that was smack dab in the middle of a proposed solar farm. And it’s going to affect property values. It’s going to affect quality of life. It’s going to affect the natural habitat,” said Trisha Lapell, a concerned resident.
Dairy farm owner Ron Robbins owns the land, which is split between Hounsfield and Watertown. Robbins declined to comment.
Solar company AES is behind the project. AES is also behind other solar projects in Clayton and the town of Lyme.
A senior development manager with AES said the company is committed to and focused on being good neighbors, engaging with local communities, and delivering long-term economic and environmental value to the area.
“The project is expected to create hundreds of construction jobs, support several full-time positions, and generate substantial tax revenue for Town of Hounsfield, the Town of Watertown, Jefferson County, and local school districts,” said Daniel Postal.
The state’s Office of Renewable Energy Siting, or ORES, has already given AES full permitting to work on the project, a process that left the towns out of the decision.
Hounsfield Town Supervisor Beth Arthur said the town board’s reaction is not the focus; resident sentiment is.
“We are elected by our residents so we will always listen to our residents and do what’s best for the community,” Arthur said.
Some residents are hoping to eventually pursue legal action against ORES to revoke AES’s permitting.
“I hope that anybody who has issue with the proposed solar farm – with the permitted solar farm – will speak up and take action if they can to stop the momentum of it moving forward,” Lapell said.
Lapell said a public hearing in the town of Hounsfield on Wednesday night offers an opportunity to speak up. Lapell hopes people will share their views on the solar project there.
Copyright 2026 WWNY. All rights reserved.

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VSL PowerHive, a wholly owned subsidiary of Vikram Solar, plans to establish a battery energy storage system (BESS) assembly plant with an annual capacity of 7.5 GWh in Oragadam, near Chennai, Tamil Nadu, India. The facility is designed to scale up to 15 GWh in phases, as the company targets 30 GWh of total battery manufacturing capacity by 2030.
Spread across approximately 1.65 lakh sq. ft, the facility is slated for inauguration in January 2027, with commercial operations expected to begin in April 2027.
Once operational, the plant will assemble lithium iron phosphate (LFP)-based energy storage systems for utility-scale and commercial and industrial (C&I) applications. Its product portfolio will include 5.016 MWh and 6.25 MWh liquid-cooled BESS containers, PowerHive’s P261 battery cabinets, utility-scale energy storage systems and renewable energy-integrated storage solutions, all to be manufactured in India under the Make in India initiative.
PowerHive plans to expand into cell manufacturing with a 7.5 GWh programme from 2028 as it aims to build a fully integrated battery manufacturing ecosystem in India, from cell to system. Backing this roadmap, PowerHive is developing indigenous battery technologies and has already initiated multiple patent filings to strengthen its technology ownership and reduce reliance on imported know-how.
“Storage is the bridge between India’s renewable ambition and round-the-clock clean power,” said Gyanesh Chaudhary, Chairman and Managing Director, Vikram Solar. “As the country scales up solar and wind, the ability to store that energy reliably will define the next phase of the transition, and that capability must be built in India. The new plant is a decisive step in that direction and extends Vikram Solar’s role in the clean energy value chain from generating power to storing it.”
“Energy storage is what makes renewable power dependable, and demand for it in India is rising faster than ever,” said Arun Mittal, CEO, VSL PowerHive. “With this development, we are setting out to build world-class battery manufacturing capability in the country, starting with 7.5 GWh of assembly and progressing to cells and an integrated ecosystem. Our aim is to give utilities, developers and industries a future-ready, domestically built storage partner for the decades ahead.”
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Qatar’s Solar Power Expansion: A Path to Renewable Energy Growth  SolarQuarter
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The installation is expected to offset a significant portion of daytime power consumption
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Lukenya Schools in Athi River has commissioned a solar power plant as the institution seeks to reduce electricity costs, minimise reliance on the national grid and guarantee uninterrupted power.
The project, installed by Safer Power Limited, comprises a 40.92-kilowatt-peak (kWp) solar photovoltaic system, a 40-kilowatt alternating current hybrid inverter and an 80-kilowatt-hour energy storage system.
The installation is expected to offset a significant portion of the school’s daytime electricity consumption while providing battery-backed power during outages.
Speaking during the commissioning, Lukenya Schools Director Mutheu Kasanga said the investment was a step towards achieving energy independence.
“Today we have commissioned a solar plant and hope to move completely out of the grid,” Kasanga said.
She noted that the institution had experienced persistent challenges with unreliable electricity supply, particularly because of its location in a rural setting, forcing it to invest in backup systems to keep operations running.
“Some of the challenges we have had with the grid being a rural school are quite significant. It takes a lot to resolve some of the issues, and we have had to invest in the past in a backup system when we have grid failure,” she said.
Kasanga said the school’s boarding status meant it required a dependable electricity supply throughout the day and night to support academic activities, accommodation and essential services.
She added that the new system would provide greater certainty during prolonged outages, particularly during rainy weather and the examination season.
The reliable supply is also expected to protect food stored in freezers and reduce losses caused by power interruptions, which have previously forced the school to use food earlier than scheduled to prevent it from spoiling.
Safer Power Group Chief Executive Officer Dalmus Mbai said the project demonstrated how renewable energy could help African institutions address persistent electricity challenges while creating a better environment for learners.
“When you look at the problems facing Africa, 90 per cent of those are related to power,” Mbai said.
Lukenya Schools founder Kasanga Mulwea described the commissioning as a major milestone for the institution, recalling the challenges of securing electricity when the school was established more than three decades ago.
“Today I am the luckiest person. We have switched from one system to another,” Mulwea said.
She recalled that 34 years ago, she had to pay commercial rates to extend electricity infrastructure from the main road to the school.
“Thirty-four years ago, the troubles we had, I had to pay commercial rates to get power from the road to here,” she said.
Mulwea noted that the cost of securing electricity infrastructure in the past had been substantially higher than the investment in the new solar project.
The installation marks a shift towards renewable energy at the institution, with the school seeking to improve operational efficiency, strengthen energy security and reduce its exposure to disruptions in the national grid.

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Oswal Pumps Announces INR 456 Crore Investment Plan for 1.2 GW TOPCon Solar Cell Manufacturing Facility  SolarQuarter
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The brother’s system has no battery backup and produces about $20 in electric bills.
Photo Credit: iStock
With monthly electricity costs nearing $600, a homeowner in New Jersey turned to Reddit to weigh whether solar still makes sense with a steep east-west roof and a dormer that shades part of one side.
Part of the appeal is that the poster’s brother in Texas installed panels, skipped battery storage, and now pays about $20 for electricity.
The Reddit post on r/solarenergy framed the decision around a sharp contrast. The homeowner said a brother in Texas was happy with solar and very low bills, while their own costs in New Jersey had climbed enough for them to write, “My electric bill has almost hit $600 this month, so maybe it’s time to consider installing solar.”
The poster also described the roof concerns in detail, writing: “My roof is fairly steep and it faces east and west. My brother has a north/south facing roof. Even worse, I have a dormer on the east side that shades half of that side of the roof from the sun.”
Want to go solar but not sure who to trust? EnergySage has your back with free and transparent quotes from fully vetted providers in your area.
To get started, just answer a few questions about your home — no phone number required. Within a day or two, EnergySage will email you the best options for your needs, and their expert advisers can help you compare quotes and pick a winner.
One user who said they also live in New Jersey and have the same roof orientation argued that it “still pays,” adding they “can say without a doubt that it is an amazing investment.” 
Concern that anything less than a perfect roof will wipe out the financial benefits is a common reason people hesitate to install rooftop solar. In this case, the homeowner was reacting to a power bill that had skyrocketed.
For homeowners facing that kind of increase, going solar is one of the best ways to save money on home energy. You can try EnergySage to get free solar installation estimates and compare quotes.
Several factors separate the Texas example from the New Jersey situation. The brother’s system has no battery backup and produces about $20 in electric bills, while the New Jersey homeowner is considering solar on a steep east-west roof with shading from a dormer — differences that can affect output, installer pricing, and payback timelines even before state-specific incentives are considered.
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To get started, just answer a few questions about your home — no phone number required. Within a day or two, EnergySage will email you the best local options for your needs, and their expert advisers can help you compare quotes and pick a winner.
For a homeowner with roof complications like these, comparison shopping becomes especially important. With EnergySage’s help, the average person can save up to $10,000 on solar purchases and installations. That kind of marketplace comparison can be particularly useful when shading, roof pitch, and panel placement all influence what installers recommend and charge.
Tools can also make the state-by-state picture easier to understand. EnergySage’s solar map shows the average cost of a home solar panel system by state, along with details on solar panel incentives for each state. Together, those resources can help homeowners get the best price for rooftop solar panels and access available incentives.
Battery storage is another part of the equation, especially since the original poster noted that their brother doesn’t have backup power. 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 home battery storage options, including competitive installation estimates, can also explore EnergySage.
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AI learns how buildings shade themselves to predict facade solar power
As cities run out of roof space, the next great solar frontier is vertical. Building-integrated photovoltaics, or BIPV, turn walls into power plants, but predicting how much electricity a facade will actually produce has always been fiendishly difficult. Unlike a rooftop array with a single tilt and orientation, a facade experiences wildly different solar conditions from floor to floor: lower storeys may sit in the shadow of neighbouring buildings while upper floors bask in open sky. A new study published in Results in Engineering tackles this problem head-on with an occlusion-aware machine learning framework that predicts annual facade energy yield across climates, and its results suggest designers may soon be able to screen thousands of facade configurations in seconds.
The research team, led by Xinsen Wang and colleagues, assembled a hybrid dataset of 12,080 BIPV facade cases spanning 62 cities in 41 countries and four major Köppen climate groups. The data combine weather-driven physical simulations using the pvlib solar engineering library, converted records from PVsyst and other photovoltaic references, and an independent compilation of real building projects. After rigorous quality control that enforced monthly-to-annual energy conservation and excluded saturated shading cases, the final dataset covers three module families—polycrystalline, monocrystalline and thin-film—and installation heights ranging from roughly one metre to nearly 45 metres. The prediction target is deliberately practical: annual electricity generation per square metre of active PV area, expressed in kilowatt-hours per square metre per year, which places configurations of different sizes and technologies on a common productivity footing.
The real innovation lies in how the framework represents occlusion geometry. Each facade configuration is described not just by its orientation and climate, but by a set of nine height-and-shading descriptors: installation height, floor index, obstruction height, horizontal separation, obstruction elevation angle, average shading fraction, signed clearance, positive clearance and relative height. The geometry works by comparing the sun’s apparent elevation against the angle subtended by a neighbouring obstruction, but only when the sun lies within the facade’s front-facing sector. Solar positions are computed hourly using the Reda-Andreas algorithm, and direct beam irradiance is screened out whenever the sun dips below the obstruction angle. A separate time-weighted shading fraction captures how much of the front-facing daylight hours are geometrically blocked, and engineered features multiply annual irradiation by the unshaded time fraction to approximate the resource that actually reaches the modules.
With the feature matrix in place, the team benchmarked nine machine learning models under a common protocol, ranging from a simple Ridge regression baseline to modern gradient-boosted ensembles including XGBoost, LightGBM and CatBoost. The clear winner was ExtraTrees, an extremely randomized tree ensemble, which achieved a test coefficient of determination of 0.856 and a mean absolute percentage error of 9.57 percent under a city-grouped holdout split—making it the only candidate to break the ten percent error barrier. In an additional five-fold city-grouped evaluation covering every record, ExtraTrees performed even better, with a pooled error of just 7.10 percent and a coefficient of determination of 0.907. The linear and AdaBoost baselines trailed far behind, confirming that the nonlinear interactions among climate, azimuth, module type and shading geometry demand tree-ensemble machinery.
Accuracy on held-out data is one thing; transferring to unseen cities and climates is another. The validation ladder therefore included leave-one-city-out tests, in which the model must predict for an entire city it has never seen, and even leave-one-climate tests that withhold whole climate groups. Under the ExtraTrees protocol, leave-one-city-out prediction achieved a pooled error of 6.95 percent. Withholding complete climate groups revealed a telling gradient: tropical climates were easiest to predict at 7.18 percent error, while continental climates proved hardest at just over 15 percent. The authors note that much of this apparent difficulty stems from a small-denominator effect—low-yield configurations show larger percentage errors but smaller absolute errors—so the continental penalty is less alarming than it first appears. Removing latitude from the feature set, meanwhile, nearly doubled the pooled error, underscoring how much composite geographic and solar-path information that single variable carries.
To disentangle what each feature block actually contributes, the researchers ran paired ablation experiments on identical data folds. Climate-only models failed spectacularly, with errors above 33 percent. Adding facade and module information cut the error roughly in half, and introducing average shading slashed it again to around 7.5 percent. Interestingly, adding the full explicit obstruction geometry on top of average shading yielded almost no further gain—a difference of just 0.016 percentage points, with a confidence interval spanning zero. The full engineered set, however, did deliver statistically significant improvements of roughly 0.4 to 0.5 percentage points over reduced variants. The lesson is subtle: average shading already encodes much of the height information, but the combined system of geometry, effective irradiation and module characteristics is what truly drives accuracy.
Interpretability came through Shapley additive explanations, or SHAP, which decompose each prediction into per-feature contributions. Across the nine models, latitude, facade azimuth, module type and average shading repeatedly emerged as the dominant drivers, with the ExtraTrees analysis ranking thin-film module encoding, latitude and azimuth as its top three features. Spline-smoothed dependence curves located zero crossings—for example, average shading contributions flip sign near a shading fraction of about 0.31, and obstruction-angle crossings appear near 20.5 and 58.1 degrees. Crucially, the team tested whether these attribution rankings were stable: refitting the model across five outer city folds produced importance-rank correlations between 0.973 and 0.995, suggesting the identified design priorities are robust rather than artifacts of a single fit.
The framework was then confronted with reality in Hohhot, China, on a real south-facing facade instrumented across five floors with three equal-power module technologies: polycrystalline silicon, cadmium telluride and monocrystalline silicon. Against a pvlib physical reference for the annual case, the model achieved 10.38 percent error with a coefficient of determination of 0.872. For April and May field measurements, seasonally allocated predictions matched observations with 7.28 percent error, and all floor-module comparisons fell within a ten percent envelope. Measured yield climbed steadily with height, from about 2.49 kilowatt-hours per kilowatt-peak per day on the first floor to 3.22 on the fifth, and the predictions tracked this vertical gradient closely. Notably, the model preserved floor ordering far more reliably than module ordering, hinting that in real buildings, choosing the right floor matters more than agonizing over equal-power module choices.
The engineering payoff was quantified through candidate-screening and timing experiments. Across twelve city-excluded selection tasks combining four weather contexts with three obstruction scenarios, the surrogate achieved a mean reference-based selection loss of just 2.34 percent, compared with 7.81 percent for a coarse resource-shading score, and it picked the reference-optimal alternative in seven of twelve tasks. Timing tests showed that evaluating 1,000 candidates takes under two seconds even in a cold-start workflow—roughly five times faster than the physical reference—and over twenty times faster once weather data and models are cached. Single queries, however, remain slower than direct physical calculation, so the speed advantage is fundamentally a batch-screening benefit.
The authors are candid about limitations: the current geometry uses single-point hourly shading without obstacle width, multiple overlapping buildings or partial module shading, and a sensitivity experiment showed that simply changing the geometric representation can shift reference yields by up to 65 percent for narrow obstructions. Complex urban canyons will still need LiDAR, GIS or full building models for detailed evaluation. Yet the framework’s core message stands: by folding climate, floor-level obstruction geometry and module technology into one interpretable, transfer-tested model, facade solar assessment moves from aggregate resource estimation to genuine configuration comparison. For architects weighing which floors of a renovation deserve PV cladding, that could mean the difference between a facade that merely looks green and one that actually earns its keep.
Subject of Research: Occlusion-aware machine learning for climate-adaptive prediction of building-integrated photovoltaic facade energy yield
Article Title: Occlusion-aware machine learning for climate-adaptive BIPV facade yield prediction
Article References: Wang, X., Aoqier, B., Liu, Y., Li, G., & Xu, G. (2026). Occlusion-aware machine learning for climate-adaptive BIPV facade yield prediction. Results in Engineering, 32, Article 113363. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.rineng.2026.113363
Image Credits: AI Generated
DOI: 10.1016/j.rineng.2026.113363
Keywords: building-integrated photovoltaics, BIPV, machine learning, facade solar energy, shading geometry, ExtraTrees, SHAP, cross-city transfer, pvlib, urban solar potential, energy yield prediction, Köppen climate groups
News Source: Denise Maddox. (October 13, 2026). AI learns how buildings shade themselves to predict facade solar power. Scienmag.
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Yomiuri: Japanese Firms Speed Up Work on Perovskite Solar Cell Mass Production to Close Gap on China  MarketWatch
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William Anderson is the Assignment Desk Editor for Action News Now.
He can be reached at wanderson@actionnewsnow.com 
BUTTE COUNTY, Calif. – Butte County residents who have any unwanted solar panels now have a free way to recycle them through a new pilot program that is being launched.
Butte County Public Works, in partnership with the California Product Stewardship Council, is offering residential solar panel recycling drop-off on select Thursdays and Fridays over the remainder of October.
The program will take place at the Neal Road Recycling and Waste Facility, located at 1023 Neal Road in Paradise.
Drop-off dates for the program are scheduled for October 15, 16, 22, 23, 29 and 30.
Appointments are required, and each household may submit only one registration.
The program is open to Butte County residents, and all solar panels must come from within the county.
The pilot program is funded by a $50,000 Household Hazardous Waste grant awarded to Butte County in February 2026.
Residents who are interested in the program can register at surveymonkey.com/r/ButteSolarCollection.
For more information, visit https://www.buttecounty.ca.gov/2306/NRRWF-Events.

William Anderson is the Assignment Desk Editor for Action News Now.
He can be reached at wanderson@actionnewsnow.com 
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During its recent 2026 Solar Analyst Day on 6 October, TOYO Co., Ltd. (TOYO) provided key updates on its U.S. manufacturing operations, coinciding with the ribbon-cutting ceremony for its module expansion in Humble, Texas.
While the presentation largely echoed the company’s first-half 2026 financial results, it offered valuable insight into management’s perspective on the broader U.S. solar landscape. Specifically, TOYO highlighted that operational U.S. module capacity has reached roughly double the projected 43 GW of domestic annual demand. As a consequence, the United States no longer requires additional module capacity.
This market assessment likely serves, in part, to explain why TOYO is bypassing further U.S. module expansions. It also contextualises why the broader Abalance/TOYO/VSUN cell production strategy has migrated so rapidly from Vietnam to Ethiopia, and ultimately directly into the United States.
While a detailed critique of the global manufacturing strategy across Abalance, VSUN, and TOYO is worth revisiting in the coming months, management’s commentary cuts directly to the heart of a much larger industry unknown: exactly how much domestic production the United States actually needs over the next decade.
For the past two decades, having a precise outlook on U.S. solar module shipments was rarely essential, serving primarily as a tool for tracking general market trends. Because the United States lacked a domestic supply base capable of accounting for the majority of its module consumption, market sizing and forecasting were largely academic exercises. Aside from First Solar, forecasting was largely a matter of calculating exactly how many gigawatts would be imported into the country, particularly from Southeast Asia.
The emergence of significant, silicon-based domestic module production since 2023 demands a new level of scrutiny regarding U.S. forecasting methodologies. While TOYO’s reliance on data suggesting a flat 43 GW of annual demand through 2031 might seem minor, investors base major capital decisions on exactly this type of narrative. Consequently, the need for a radical overhaul of how we calculate U.S. module production requirements over the next decade carries far higher stakes than ever before.
To suggest that the U.S. does not require any additional module capacity is similarly misplaced and risks sending the wrong signal to outside observers. The critical question today is not about nameplate capacity alone, but rather actual production requirements mapped against dynamic forward forecasts.
U.S. utility-scale module demand over the next decade will be aggressively driven by massive solar farm deployments designed to power skyrocketing load growth from data centres and artificial intelligence infrastructure. Consequently, future production forecasts would be far more accurate if built from a bottom-up analysis of domestic module manufacturers’ contracted pipelines—ultimately the most valid metric to use under these rapidly changing market conditions.
The figure above, taken from the new release of the Solar Manufacturing USA Quarterly report, illustrates this bottom-up pipeline analysis through the end of 2028, with projected production volumes segmented by key regional manufacturing hubs across the United States.
Moving forward, individual domestic module manufacturers will make targeted, independent judgments regarding capacity additions to satisfy their own specific project pipelines. Consequently, total U.S. solar capacity and actual production volumes will likely be determined by a bottom-up aggregation of these corporate pipelines, where a select group of 10 to 20 key suppliers effectively dictates a production-driven market trajectory.
Over the coming months, I intend to explore this pivotal issue in greater detail. Accurately forecasting this domestic trajectory is critical for mapping out forward demand across the upstream ingot, wafer, and cell production segments. Ultimately, this goes far beyond simply quantifying domestic manufacturing output—it underpins the massive amounts of capital that must be injected into the U.S. manufacturing sector over the next decade.
To register your interest in the Solar Manufacturing USA Quarterly report, please send an email to: [email protected]
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Band Alignment Trick Pushes Lead-Free Perovskite Solar Cells Toward 27% Efficiency
Lead-free perovskite solar cells have long promised a cleaner future for photovoltaics, but translating that promise into competitive efficiency has proven stubbornly difficult. Now, a computational study from researchers at Maulana Azad National Institute of Technology in Bhopal, India, suggests that one of the most important levers may be hiding at the interface between the light-absorbing material and the layer that extracts holes from it. In a paper published in Scientific Reports, Sankarshan Arane and Piyush Kumar Patel report a systematic numerical investigation of how the valence band offset at the interface between a hole transport layer and the all-inorganic double perovskite Cs2PdBr6 shapes nearly every aspect of device behaviour, from electrostatics to recombination to ultimate power output.
Cs2PdBr6 has attracted significant attention in the photovoltaic community because it sidesteps two of the most persistent criticisms levelled at conventional lead-halide perovskites. As an all-inorganic compound, it avoids the volatility problems associated with organic components, and as a lead-free material it eliminates the toxicity concerns that have complicated commercialisation. The material also brings genuinely promising optoelectronic properties to the table. Yet a perovskite absorber cannot deliver electricity on its own. It must be sandwiched between selective contacts that shepherd electrons and holes in opposite directions, and the quality of those contacts, particularly their energetic alignment with the absorber, often determines whether a theoretically excellent material becomes a practically excellent cell.
The Indian team focused on a parameter that is easy to state but notoriously tricky to optimise: the valence band offset, or VBO, which is the energy difference between the valence band edge of the hole transport layer and that of the absorber. When the absorber’s valence band sits above the transport layer’s, the alignment is described as a cliff; when it sits below, the alignment forms a spike. The magnitude matters as much as the sign. A small offset may fail to block the wrong carriers, while an excessive one can create a barrier that impedes the very carriers the layer is meant to collect. Using the widely trusted one-dimensional solar cell capacitance simulator SCAPS-1D, developed at Ghent University, the authors swept across hole transport materials spanning cliff-type alignments, an intermediate spike regime, and excessive spike-type configurations.
The central finding is a strong non-monotonic dependence of performance on the valence band offset. In other words, more of a good thing is not better. Devices with cliff-type alignments suffered from weak interfacial electric fields, leaving carrier extraction to diffusion alone. Diffusion-limited transport is a slow and lossy way to move photogenerated holes across an interface, and the simulations showed that it leads to increased interfacial recombination, in which electrons and holes annihilate each other at the junction instead of contributing to current. Every recombined pair is energy lost, and the cliff geometry quietly multiplies those losses.
At the other extreme, large positive valence band offsets produced their own pathology. Rather than helping, an excessive spike induces carrier accumulation at the interface and erects a transport barrier that holes must struggle to surmount. The result is again degraded performance, though for the opposite reason. The sweet spot lies in between: a balanced positive VBO generates an optimised depletion field at the junction, an internal electric field that actively assists drift transport of holes toward the contact while simultaneously suppressing the interfacial recombination that plagues cliff-type designs. The physics is elegant in its symmetry, with too little energetic separation starving the interface of useful field and too much separation choking the traffic it is meant to accelerate.
Among the hole transport materials examined, vanadium pentoxide, V2O5, emerged as the clear winner. With a valence band offset of plus 0.3 electron volts relative to the Cs2PdBr6 absorber, V2O5 sits squarely in the optimised intermediate spike regime. The simulated device built around this contact delivered a power conversion efficiency of 27.48 percent, with an open-circuit voltage of 1.26 volts, a short-circuit current density of 25.1 milliamperes per square centimetre, and a fill factor of 87.3 percent. For a lead-free, all-inorganic perovskite architecture, those are striking numbers, and they place the hypothetical device well within the range of the best lead-based perovskite cells reported experimentally.
The study went beyond headline efficiency figures to examine how the optimised alignment changes the spectral response of the device. Quantum efficiency analysis revealed that engineering the valence band offset enhances long-wavelength carrier collection by extending the effective drift region across the bulk of the absorber. This matters because long-wavelength photons generate carriers deeper inside the material, where a purely diffusion-based collection mechanism struggles to reach before recombination intervenes. A stronger, better-placed depletion field effectively widens the zone from which carriers can be pulled out intact, allowing red light that would otherwise be wasted to contribute to the photocurrent.
What makes the work notable is its methodical framing of interface energetics as a design variable rather than an afterthought. Much of the perovskite literature concentrates on the absorber itself, refining composition and crystallinity, while the contacts are chosen from a menu of established organic and inorganic transport materials. The Bhopal study argues that the choice of hole transport layer should be made with the band alignment of the specific absorber in mind, since the same material can behave very differently when paired with different perovskites. For Cs2PdBr6 specifically, the results provide a concrete target: hole transport layers with a moderate positive valence band offset around a few tenths of an electron volt.
There are, of course, the usual caveats that accompany simulation-based studies. SCAPS-1D solves the coupled equations of carrier transport and Poisson electrostatics for an idealised one-dimensional device stack, and its predictions depend on the material parameters fed into it, some of which for Cs2PdBr6 are still being refined by experimental measurement. Real devices also face challenges that a one-dimensional model cannot capture, including film morphology, pinholes, chemical reactions at interfaces, and long-term degradation. The authors themselves describe the work as a numerical investigation, and the acknowledged purpose of the SCAPS package, developed by Professor Marc Burgelman and colleagues at Ghent University, is precisely to guide experimental design by narrowing the parameter space before fabrication begins.
Even so, the implications are broad. Lead-free double perovskites remain one of the most compelling candidates for sustainable photovoltaics, and the finding that a single interfacial parameter can swing simulated efficiency so dramatically offers a clear and inexpensive route to improvement. If experimentalists can confirm that pairing Cs2PdBr6 with hole transport materials such as V2O5, or with other layers engineered to a similar offset, reproduces even a fraction of the predicted gains, the study could mark a meaningful step toward high-performance solar cells that are both efficient and free of lead. In a field where every percentage point of efficiency brings commercial viability closer, the message that the interface deserves as much attention as the absorber is one the photovoltaic community is likely to take seriously.
Subject of Research: Valence band offset engineering at the hole transport layer/Cs2PdBr6 interface in lead-free double perovskite solar cells
Article Title: Numerical investigation of valence band offset at the HTL/Cs2PdBr6 interface for high-performance double perovskite solar cells
Article References: Arane, S., & Patel, P. K. (2026). Numerical investigation of valence band offset at the HTL/Cs2PdBr6 interface for high-performance double perovskite solar cells. Scientific Reports. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-026-71884-6
Image Credits: AI Generated
DOI: 10.1038/s41598-026-71884-6
Keywords: perovskite solar cells, Cs2PdBr6, double perovskites, valence band offset, hole transport layer, band alignment, lead-free photovoltaics, SCAPS-1D, interfacial recombination, V2O5, power conversion efficiency, carrier transport
News Source: Denise Maddox. (October 13, 2026). Band Alignment Trick Pushes Lead-Free Perovskite Solar Cells Toward 27% Efficiency. Scienmag.
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Delhi launches portal for rooftop solar panels, targets 2.3 lakh households  India Today
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Investigators at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology have determined that renewable portfolio standards and large-scale renewable generation are not linked to elevated household power rates in the United States, whereas rooftop solar is tied to steeper prices, as reported by pv magazine. The conclusions stem from a working paper authored by Fischer J. Espiritu Argosino and Christopher R. Knittel of the MIT Center for Energy and Environmental Policy Research.
The pair constructed a state-utility panel covering 1998 through 2023 that ties together residential rates, the severity of renewable portfolio standards, generation blends and utility expenditures, relying on information from the US Energy Information Administration, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission and Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory.
Applying a two-way fixed effects regression model that adjusts for unobserved variations across years and among states, the authors found that renewable portfolio standards exert essentially no influence on prices, while utility-scale renewables show a modest connection to cheaper prices. Utility-scale solar especially demonstrated a strong association with reduced prices.
According to the paper’s regression coefficients, which gauge generation shares against coal, a 10-percentage-point gain in utility-scale solar’s portion of generation corresponds to residential prices slightly more than 8% lower. A 5-percentage-point gain in rooftop solar’s portion corresponds to prices about 16% higher. The authors warned that these outcomes are correlations and indicated that subsequent research will employ more rigorous econometric methods to bolster the causal reading of the estimates.
The researchers proposed one rationale for the utility-scale finding: sizable solar installations might alleviate network congestion and exert downward pressure on overall generation expenses since they need no fuel inputs. A second model, which additionally adjusts for variations among utilities, revealed utility-scale solar strongly tied to reduced transmission, distribution and total operation and maintenance costs.
Regarding rooftop solar, the researchers proposed that tariff design might partially account for the result. They observed that existing rate structures in certain states transfer fixed costs connected to rooftop solar from system owners to other ratepayers, meaning those lacking rooftop solar frequently subsidize those who possess it via an extra volumetric rate.
Rooftop solar also showed a strong correlation with elevated distribution operation and maintenance costs. The researchers attributed this to the distribution network having been built without bidirectional power flows in mind.
CEEPR does not subject working papers to peer review before posting them. The researchers stated that policymakers can achieve an affordable energy future by enhancing the integration of low-cost renewables while adopting more equitable cost recovery approaches.
A June 2025 study from Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory headed by Ryan Wiser arrived at a comparable conclusion regarding utility-scale renewables, discovering that the approximately 75% of US utility-scale wind and solar constructed outside renewable portfolio standard programs had no widely apparent upward impact on retail prices.
The rooftop solar result contributes to a longstanding conflict over cost-shifting in California. The California Public Utilities Commission’s Public Advocates Office has calculated an $8.5 billion cost shift from rooftop solar customers to other ratepayers. A 2025 report by M.Cubed Consulting and the California Solar and Storage Association determined instead that rooftop solar produced a $1.5 billion net benefit for all California ratepayers. Solar proponents have likewise contended that growing transmission and distribution expenditures are a bigger factor behind rate hikes.
The researchers detailed their results in a paper titled Renewables and Electricity Affordability: Untangling Correlation from Causation, issued as MIT CEEPR Working Paper 2025-22.
This report provides an in-depth analysis of the Solar Panels market in the United States, covering market size, growth trajectory, demand structure, supply capability, trade flows, pricing, competitive landscape, and forecast to 2035.
The study is designed for manufacturers, distributors, importers, exporters, investors, procurement teams, advisors, and strategy teams that need a consistent, data-driven view of market dynamics and a transparent analytical definition of the product scope.
This report covers photovoltaic (PV) solar panels, which are devices that convert sunlight directly into electricity. It encompasses the global market for finished modules, including all major product technologies and form factors designed for a wide range of end-use applications.
The report combines the standard market-statistics backbone with strategic chapters that are useful for commercial planning, sourcing decisions, market entry, competitor monitoring, and portfolio prioritization.
The market is segmented into decision-relevant buckets so that demand drivers, pricing logic, supply constraints, and competitive positions can be compared across the same analytical frame.
The market data is classified and analyzed according to international trade codes, primarily under the Harmonized System (HS) headings for photovoltaic cells and electric generating sets. This ensures consistent tracking of trade flows for assembled solar modules and relevant apparatus across global markets.
Coverage focuses on United States and includes demand, supply capability where present, trade flows, pricing, competition, and outlook.
The report combines official statistics, trade records, company disclosures, product-level evidence, and analyst validation. Data are standardized, reconciled, and cross-checked to keep market sizing, trade flows, pricing, and forecasts comparable across countries and time periods.
All indicators are mapped to a consistent product definition and reviewed against the segmentation framework used in the Table of Contents.
Report Scope and Analytical Framing
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
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Supermarket rooftop salad garden in Berlin
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2026/sep/11/supermarket-salad-rooftop-garden-berlin
Integrating agriculture into European urban landscapes matters: A systematic assessment
“Urban agriculture can supply 28% of the vegetable demand for 190M European residents.”
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2210670726003094
City scale study: A large share of Berlin’s vegetable consumption can be produced within the city
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S2210670722006679
97% Food waste recycling in South Korea, NYC following their model
https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20260916-new-york-has-a-food-waste-problem-south-korea-has-already-solved-it
If you hit a paywall, try https://archive.ph/rmuNs
Living sea walls – mariculture can be very productive
https://www.bostonharbornow.org/stone-living-lab-living-seawalls-panels-installed-first-in-north-america/
https://stonelivinglab.org/news-article/living-seawalls-one-year-update/
hat tip WCVB Chronicle 9/18/26
“French agrivoltaic trials cut water loss, lift maize yields by 19.6%”
https://www.pv-magazine.com/2026/09/18/french-agrivoltaic-trials-cut-water-loss-lift-maize-yields-by-19-6/
Conscious Food Systems Alliance
https://consciousfoodsystems.org/
September 2026 summit
https://consciousfoodsystems.org/bhutan-summit-2026/
China’s agricultural drones
https://cleantechnica.com/2026/09/20/china-agricultural-drones-30-times-us/
Native plants below solar panels can increase insect and especially native bee populations and benefit local agriculture
https://www.ecoticias.com/en/two-minnesota-solar-farms-turned-the-ground-beneath-their-panels-into-habitat-and-native-bee-abundance-rose-more-than-20-fold/36680/
Editorial Comment: this is not agrivoltaics but a solar farm where there are no harvestable crops planted below the solar panels
hat tip to Lee West @whodat35.bsky.social
Solar farms reducing dust pollution in China – again not agrivoltaics but environmental cobenefits nonetheless
https://phys.org/news/2026-09-solar-farms-generate-energy-pollution.html
hat tip @robertferry.bsky.social
Farmers and Climate Change: Agricultural Adaptation in an Age of Rural Polarization by Margiana Petersen-Rockney
YALE UNIVERSITY PRESS ISBN-10: ‎ 0300282257; ISBN-13: ‎ 978-0300282252)
Editorial Comment: Seems like a timely book
NYC’s Lower East Side gardens
https://gardendistrictnyc.greenmap.org/
hat tip Wendy Brawer who has been doing Green Maps for decades now
Editorial Comment: I remember the beginnings of the urban gardening movement in NYC and Boston back in the 1970s. For me, it was a direct outgrowth of the antiwar movement, as were food and other consumer coops.
Rose-colored solar panels for agrivoltaics – “pink houses” go solar as vegetal photosynthesis doesn’t use red light 
https://www.linkedin.com/posts/prspeak-worldwide_what-if-a-farm-could-produce-vegetables-and-activity-7512937499065823233-LgRb
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$31m boost for robots to speed up solar farm builds  InnovationAus.com
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India wastes 4% of solar power amid power shortages in July, August, report shows  Reuters
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Posted on Oct 13, 2026
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MR Wind S.r.l., a company that has been active in the market for years with a focus on developing renewable energy initiatives, and its strategic partners have sold 100% of the share capital of three corporate vehicles holding as many ready-to-build photovoltaic projects, with a total capacity of about 5 MW, located in Campania, to a well-known independent renewable energy producer, active in developing sustainable photovoltaic plants throughout Italy.
The transaction was promoted and supported by LinkeGreen, a matchmaking company between developers and investors in the utility-scale renewable plant market, both greenfield and brownfield. LinkeGreen followed the parties throughout the entire negotiation process, from the meeting of supply and demand to the signing of the acquisition agreements.
MR Wind S.r.l. and its strategic partners were assisted by BIP Law & Tax, which supported the sellers in the negotiation of the related contractual documentation with a team made up of Equity Partner Marco Muscettola and Manager Marco Pellegrini.
Image: ©MR Wind S.r.l.
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Photovoltaic solar plant a 50 MW battery storage system is the infrastructure project that the Tunisian state-owned electricity company STEG has put out to tender for the Tataouine Governorate in southern Tunisia. The project includes a 10 MW battery storage system with 20 MWh of energy capacity, along with the necessary infrastructure for connecting to the high-voltage grid. The tender notice was published on October 9, 2026, on the ECEPP electronic portal.
The Tunisian Energy and Gas Company (STEG) is listed as the contracting entity, the announcement pertains to a single-stage open tender for construction work, so the plant should not yet be presented as built or awarded. Its scope combines renewable energy generation, storage, and transmission three components that must function in a coordinated manner to deliver electricity to the national grid.
The plant will have a planned photovoltaic capacity of 50 MW, this figure represents the installation’s generation capacity under reference conditions, but it does not equate to the energy produced in a single day. Actual production will depend on several factors, including available solar radiation, temperature, electrical losses, and operating conditions.
For their part, the batteries will have a power of 10 MW and a nominal energy capacity of 20 MWh, the first figure indicates how much electricity the system can deliver at a given time, the second indicates the amount of energy it can store. If it were discharged at its constant nominal power, it would have a theoretical duration of two hours, before considering operational limits and losses.
This distinction is important for understanding the project the 50 MW of solar power and the 10 MW of the BESS should not be automatically added together as if they were additional permanent generation capacity. The storage system manages previously charged energy, and its effective contribution will depend on how its charging and discharging are scheduled.
The notice identifies the process as a single-stage open tender for construction works, interested companies can consult the documentation through the ECEPP portal, after registering where applicable. There, they will find the technical, financial, and eligibility requirements that should guide the preparation of their bids.
The call for proposals was published on October 9, 2026, and sets December 10, 2026, at 9:00 a.m. as the closing date and time. Participants should check the electronic file for any subsequent clarifications or changes, as well as instructions on submitting proposals.
The announcement indicates that STEG plans to use some of the resources from a loan or grant administered by the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development to cover the cost of the contracts. However, the publication consulted does not provide the total budget, the start date of the works, or the commissioning schedule. This information should not yet be considered confirmed.
The initiative is located in the Tataouine governorate, in the south of Tunisia, choosing a site for solar energy requires evaluating the available resources and terrain conditions, but also its distance from the grid, access routes, and maintenance needs, these are relevant aspects for any installation of this scale.
In a solar operating environment, heat, dust, and dirt buildup can affect module performance, therefore, detailed engineering typically studies equipment selection, ventilation, cleaning procedures, and inspection frequency. The public notice does not specify what specific solutions will be used in Tataouine.
In addition, storage introduces its own monitoring needs, batteries require thermal control, electrical protection, and systems that monitor their state of charge. These elements contribute to maintaining adequate operating conditions, especially when the installation must respond to changes in solar production.
The plant requires infrastructure to carry electricity from the generating equipment to the grid connection point. The announced scope includes high-voltage installations and associated transmission lines. According to initial project information, a substation and approximately eight kilometers of 225 kV lines are planned.
The substation plays a central role in this system, enabling the transformation of voltage levels and providing switching, metering, and protection devices. This allows electricity to be transported under conditions compatible with the technical requirements of the network to which the complex will be connected.
On the other hand, transmission lines must be designed according to the route, required capacity, and applicable safety criteria. Protection and communication systems capable of detecting faults and coordinating equipment response are also needed. The public notice does not specify the exact interconnection point or the final design of these facilities.
Solar energy varies throughout the day and decreases when there is insufficient radiation, a Battery Energy Storage System (BESS) allows for the storage of some of the available production for later delivery, always within its capacity and the established operating limits. In Tataouine, a 20 MWh battery could be used to shift energy to periods of lower photovoltaic generation. It could also help smooth out certain delivery variations if the control strategy and the contract allow for it. These uses are technical possibilities of energy storage, not specific services confirmed in the contract announcement.
Furthermore, coordination between solar inverters, battery converters, and control systems will be crucial, scheduling must consider how much energy is generated, how much is stored, and when it is best to discharge it. Proper management aims to avoid unnecessary restrictions and leverage the grid infrastructure without exceeding its operational limits. Storage capacity also doesn’t mean the plant can continuously supply any demand for two hours, the nominal duration is calculated at a specific power output, while the actual usable energy can vary depending on efficiency, temperature, state of charge, and system safety conditions.
The execution of a complex of this type requires coordinating civil works, electromechanical installation and electrical work, in a photovoltaic plant the components include support structures, modules, inverters, cabling, and monitoring systems. In the BESS system, containers or cabinets, conversion equipment, and controls dedicated to battery safety are also included.
The high-voltage connection adds other tasks, such as protection testing, equipment verification, and commissioning of communication systems, it is not enough to install each component separately, it is also necessary to verify that the solar power plant, batteries, and substation respond correctly when operating together.
However, the design, testing, warranty, and maintenance requirements applicable to this tender must be verified in the official documents, the general notice refers to that document for complete specifications and the obligations that the winning bidder will assume.
For now, the main news is the opening of the competitive bidding process, not the start of construction, after the deadline for submitting bids, announcements regarding evaluation, awarding, and construction scheduling will follow. The available publication does not identify a winning contractor.
The project is notable for combining a 50 MW solar power plant, 10 MW/20 MWh batteries, and transmission infrastructure within a single project. If implemented according to the final contract terms, it could provide new renewable energy generation and time-of-use energy management options in southern Tunisia.
For companies in the sector, the crucial information will be in the technical file, which details the responsibilities for engineering, supply, construction, and testing, as well as the criteria that will determine the viability of the bids. Meanwhile, STEG’s call for tenders puts Tataouine on the map of opportunities for solar energy with storage in Tunisia.
Source: European Bank
Photo: Shutterstock
Moises Carrasquero is a mechanical engineer and writer specializing in technology, engineering, and industrial development, with a focus on the advancements that are transforming these sectors. My goal is to turn complex technical information into clear, accurate, and relevant journalistic content.
The alliance integrates Orbital and Seeq to investigate anomalies and support decisions in power plants, LNG and petrochemicals.
The agreement will promote research on nuclear-powered ships, floating power plants, and naval infrastructure for commercial applications in the United States.
Wärtsilä adds the Viking XPRS to its marine maintenance program through a five-year contract with Viking Line.
Start structural maintenance by prioritizing fast risk identification in the field over fixing full documentation first.
A fuel can be “green” and still turn a routine transfer into an engineering challenge.
How NDT practical experience turns training and examination into field competence for making decisions during real inspections.
The contract covers the supply of pipes and technical solutions to develop the Absheron gas field in the Caspian Sea.
The company will transform the LNG carrier into a floating LNG facility
Q8Aviation selects ETFuels to negotiate an e-SAF supply agreement linked to the Kings Road Humber project.
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ESMC calls for EU policy support to ‘rebuild the full PV value chain’  PV Tech
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According to the National Intellectual Property Administration, Hengdian Group DMEGC Magnetics Co., Ltd. has filed a patent application titled "Method for Preparing a Solar Cell," with publication number CN122892299A and an application date of June 2026.
The patent abstract shows that the present disclosure relates to the technical field of solar cells and discloses a method for preparing a solar cell. The method for preparing a solar cell includes: forming a first doped semiconductor layer on the light-receiving surface of a base layer, and forming a second doped semiconductor layer on the back surface of the base layer; at least one of the first doped semiconductor layer and the second doped semiconductor layer includes alternately arranged contact regions and non-contact regions, where the surface of the contact regions protrudes relative to the surface of the non-contact regions, and the doping concentration of the contact regions is greater than that of the non-contact regions; or, forming alternately arranged first doped semiconductor layers and second doped semiconductor layers on the back surface of the base layer, where the first doped semiconductor layers and the second doped semiconductor layers are configured as contact regions; and forming a first electrode and a second electrode. The present disclosure achieves regionally differentiated treatment, reduces contact resistance, and improves the open-circuit voltage and short-circuit current of the cell.
Data Source Statement: Except for publicly available information, all other data are processed by SMM based on publicly available information, market communication, and relying on SMM's internal database model. They are for reference only and do not constitute decision-making recommendations.
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As the solar industry pushes for higher output and leaner manufacturing, pushing performance limits requires more than cutting costs. True market success depends on ensuring that next-generation designs can endure decades of field operations without unexpected degradation.
The TaiyangNews Reliable PV Module Design Online Conference, taking place on Thursday, October 15, 2026, from 09:30 to 13:00 CEST, will bring together leading module manufacturers, material and component suppliers, testing organizations, and other industry experts to discuss the latest module products and design concepts, material choices, quality considerations, and reliability challenges, from cells, glass, encapsulants, backsheets, and interconnection technologies to complete module architectures.
Djamel Eddine Mansour, Product Manager at JA, will discuss how the layout redesign of the company’s DeepBlue 5.0 platform has improved reliability.
The conference is just 2 days away. Register for free here.
LONGi PotisEdge, LONGi’s energy storage subsidiary, has started operations at its smart manufacturing base in Suzhou, Jiangsu province. Designed for an annual capacity of 50 GWh, the facility will manufacture, test, and deliver utility-scale, commercial and industrial (C&I), off-grid, and microgrid energy storage products for global markets.
The utility-scale storage integration line is scheduled to reach an annual capacity of 31 GWh by October 2026 and expand to 50 GWh in the first half of 2027. The C&I storage line is expected to exceed 10,000 units of annual production by the end of LONGi said the facility extends its ‘LONGi ONE’ strategy into manufacturing and will support the expansion of its global energy storage business.
In an exclusive interview with TaiyangNews earlier this year, LONGi’s Dennis She explained why the company is combining PV and battery storage under the LONGi ONE platform, its market focus, and how it sees integrated energy systems evolving (see LONGi Explains Its Integrated Solar-Plus-Storage Strategy).
Liaoning’s provincial development and reform commission has selected 22 new energy storage projects for the first batch under China’s 15^th Five-Year Plan (2026-2030), with a combined power capacity of 3.15 GW. The project owners include CATL and CR Power. The projects will be developed in Shenyang, Dalian, Yingkou, and Chaoyang, covering independent storage, grid-side storage, and renewable energy-plus-storage applications.
The selected projects will use lithium iron phosphate (LFP) batteries, vanadium redox flow batteries, and compressed-air energy storage, with an emphasis on long-duration technologies. The largest is a 350 MW/2,800 MWh compressed-air energy storage facility in Gaizhou, Yingkou, providing approximately 8 hours of storage. Shenyang’s Shenbei New Area will host a 200 MW/800 MWh vanadium flow battery station, while several other projects will use electrochemical storage systems.
Flexible thin-film gallium arsenide (GaAs) solar cell developer DR Technology reported that its independently developed triple-junction cell achieved 38.3% power conversion efficiency under the AM1.5G standard spectrum. Fraunhofer ISE tested and certified the result, which the company says exceeds its July record of 38.0%.
DR Technology said it is the only Chinese company to have achieved volume production and aerospace validation of high-efficiency flexible thin-film triple-junction GaAs solar cells. The company says it has deployed its products on several commercial satellites, which are operating in orbit. The cells are also intended for applications where low weight and high efficiency are critical, including long-endurance near-space unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs).
Earlier this year, Shanghai’s ‘Xingshu Plan’ space computing constellation adopted perovskite tandem solar technology to power its central computing satellite, stating it is significantly less expensive than GaAs space cells (see China Solar PV News Snippets).
Guangdong has launched mechanism price bidding for 2026 renewable energy projects, setting an initial full-year bidding volume of 7.934 billion kWh for distributed PV.
The bidding is open to distributed PV projects that have entered operation or are committed to doing so between June 1, 2025, and October 31, 2027, and are not already covered by the mechanism. The bidding price must fall between RMB 0.200/kWh and RMB 0.400/kWh, with the resulting mechanism price applying for 12 years.
The maximum declared share of electricity covered by the mechanism is 80% for distributed PV projects connected at voltage levels below 110 kV and 70% for other distributed PV projects. Separate rules will apply to offshore PV projects included in provincial development pilot programs.
A recent assessment by the Guangdong Provincial Energy Bureau found that the province had another 24.21 GW of capacity available for new grid connections (see China Solar PV News Snippets).
TaiyangNews 2024

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Improving power conversion efficiency and long-term operational stability remains a key challenge for perovskite solar cells, partly due to the thermal instability of conventional molecular contacts. Under thermal stress, single-component molecular contacts can lose their ordered molecular packing, compromising hole transport and accelerating device degradation. To address this issue, researchers in China have developed high-entropy molecular contacts (HE-MCs) designed to improve both device efficiency and operational stability.
“Developing high-entropy packing in hole-selective self-assembled molecule (HSM) systems to prevent molecular contact (MC) collapse remains unexplored,” the researchers said. “The key challenge is balancing ordered HSM self-assembly with high-entropy structural complexity while maintaining efficient hole transport.”
The researchers said their approach involves blending several specially designed HSMs with similar chemical structures but non-centrosymmetric units to promote complex molecular stacking. Mixing the molecules increases configurational disorder and enables the formation of HE-MCs at the hole-selective interface.
The group fabricated inverted perovskite solar cells using a molecular contact consisting of three related carbazole-based molecules: CbzNaph, CbzNaphBF and CbzNaphBT. The latter two incorporate oxygen- and sulfur-containing units, respectively, resulting in different intermolecular interactions and packing arrangements.
The researchers mixed the molecules at a 1:1:1 molar ratio, spin-coated the solution onto cleaned fluorine-doped tin oxide (FTO) glass substrates, and annealed it at 100 C for 10 minutes to form the hole-selective contact.
They then deposited a perovskite absorber with a bandgap of 1.55 eV using a two-step spin-coating process with chlorobenzene as an antisolvent, followed by annealing at 100 C for 30 minutes. After surface passivation, they deposited a 30 nm fullerene (C60) layer by thermal evaporation, a 40 nm tin oxide (SnO2) layer by atomic layer deposition, and a 100 nm copper rear electrode by thermal evaporation.
The researchers also applied a 120 nm magnesium fluoride coating to the back of the glass substrate to reduce reflection losses. The resulting cell featured an FTO/HE-MCs/perovskite/C60/SnO2/Cu architecture.
The team used molecular dynamics simulations, density functional theory calculations, and structural and spectroscopic measurements to investigate molecular packing and charge transport before and after thermal aging. It also evaluated the completed devices through efficiency measurements, prolonged exposure to 85 C, thermal cycling between room temperature and 85 C, and maximum power point tracking under continuous one-sun illumination at 85 C.
“The HE-MC-based devices showed improved average power conversion efficiency (PCE) from 26.37% to 27.29% compared with the CbzNaph-based device, accompanied by the enhanced open-circuit voltage (VOC) and fill factor (FF), which could be attributed to the enhanced hole-selectivity and interfacial passivation,” the researchers said.
The champion device achieved a power conversion efficiency of 27.50% under reverse-scan conditions, with an open-circuit voltage of 1.202 V, a short-circuit current density of 26.40 mA/cm2, and a fill factor of 86.67%. The researchers reported negligible hysteresis under forward-scan conditions.
The device also achieved an integrated short-circuit current density of 25.72 mA/cm2 based on external quantum efficiency measurements, in good agreement with the current density obtained from current-voltage measurements. The Tianjin Institute of Metrological Supervision and Testing independently certified a steady-state efficiency of 27.31% for one of the fabricated cells.
The certified result is slightly below the 27.41% efficiency reported in May 2026 for an inverted perovskite solar cell fabricated by researchers led by Shaanxi Normal University in China, in collaboration with Linköping University in Sweden and other institutions. The earlier result, published in nature, was certified under reverse-scan conditions.
The researchers presented their findings in “High-entropy molecular contacts enable high-efficiency and stable perovskite solar cells,” published in Nature Photonics. The research team included scientists from China’s City University of Hong Kong, Jilin University, and Sun Yat-sen University.

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High in the Swiss Alps, a PV module may encounter intense irradiation reflected from snow while operating at temperatures well below freezing. Thousands of kilometers south, a module in the North African desert will be confronted with heat, dust, UV exposure and sandstorms. A continent away, in Singapore, installations must endure a combination of heat, …
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pv magazine USA hosts its multi-day virtual event on U.S. solar and energy storage, covering domestic manufacturing, distributed energy and the growing role of solar-plus-storage in meeting AI-driven power demand.
pv magazine hosts its four-day virtual event on European solar and energy storage, exploring market opportunities, solar-plus-storage business cases, technical quality, and cybersecurity in the years ahead.
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After all the waiting, the news was good for the homeowner.
Photo Credit: iStock
When a homeowner brings a new solar system online, utility companies can sometimes take a while to update their antiquated billing practices. 
One Massachusetts homeowner waited months to receive their first power bill after their home solar was activated. Based on the solar system’s data, the homeowner believed their power bill should be $0, but that only made the long wait even more frustrating. 
The issue came up in a post on Reddit’s r/Solar forum, where the original poster said they were told utility bills are usually about 10 days late after a new solar system comes online. The bill would be the first statement to reflect a complete billing cycle with solar, and after roughly 15 days, they said the utility still had not provided an answer on when it would arrive.
“I fully expect to have no usage as I produced more than I used based on my apps tracking but until I see my bill I don’t know for sure,” the OP wrote. 
Want to go solar but not sure who to trust? EnergySage has your back with free and transparent quotes from fully vetted providers in your area.
To get started, just answer a few questions about your home — no phone number required. Within a day or two, EnergySage will email you the best options for your needs, and their expert advisers can help you compare quotes and pick a winner.
In subsequent updates, the OP shared that they still had not received their bill for two billing cycles. 
Anxious about the long wait, they began to doubt that the bill would ultimately deliver good news.
“I am sure this error will not be in my favor,” the OP wrote in an update. 
Some Redditors responded that they had similar experiences after installing home solar. 
FROM OUR PARTNER
Want to go solar but not sure who to trust? EnergySage has your back with free and transparent quotes from fully vetted providers that can help you save as much as $10k on installation.
To get started, just answer a few questions about your home — no phone number required. Within a day or two, EnergySage will email you the best local options for your needs, and their expert advisers can help you compare quotes and pick a winner.
“I didn’t get a bill for 2 months,” said one. 
However, other commenters said they received their first bill after solar activation on time. 
For many solar households, the first statement covering a full cycle is when projected savings finally get measured against the utility’s numbers. Though many solar users monitor their system’s production through an app or other interface, those numbers may not seem “official” until the utility company verifies them. 
This is particularly true when a customer participates in net metering and their solar production exceeds their household use. 
💡Go deep on the latest news and trends shaping the residential solar landscape
Going solar is one of the best ways to save money on home energy. Homeowners shopping for a system can try EnergySage to get free solar installation estimates and compare quotes.
In the end, the OP shared an update saying that they finally had received one of the two late bills. After all the waiting, the news was good for the homeowner. 
“Finally got a bill,” they wrote in the comments. “I have a credit of $110.” 
“I guess it is all good as National Grid’s production matches what my app says, but still not sure why I am so behind on my billing,” they added. 
For homeowners considering whether home solar is right for them and their budget, EnergySage offers free tools that let you curate competitive bids from local installers without handing over your personal information until you are ready.
With EnergySage’s help, the average person can save up to $10,000 on solar purchases and installations. EnergySage’s solar map shows the average cost of a home solar panel system by state, along with details on solar panel incentives for each state. Together, these resources can help homeowners 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 can also explore EnergySage for information about home battery storage options, including competitive installation estimates.
Plenty of solar homeowners have found that the first utility bill after installation raises more questions than answers. These articles cover disputed charges, lingering costs, and households whose bills dropped close to zero.
• In South Carolina, exports in the app preceded a $150 bill claiming near-zero grid use.
• A new homeowner’s first bill hit $420 even though rooftop panels helped sell the house.
• In Ohio, one homeowner learned net metering may leave much of the electric bill untouched.
• One homeowner said, “I do not have an electric bill anymore” after major solar incentives.
• Homeowners told cautious shoppers they haven’t paid more than $20 for a bill in years.
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CONWAY — The Planning Board reviewed changes to BlueWave Solar’s plans for a solar array on Roaring Brook Road last week, and discussed the property’s slopes and screening methods before continuing its discussion to an eighth hearing.
“There’s more ahead,” Planning Board Chair George Forcier told attendees on Thursday.
The proposed solar array would be a dual-use system, allowing landowners to continue using the site for farming, with animals able to graze under the panels. The initial application for the project on Ronald Boyden’s farmland described a 4.99-megawatt system with solar panels set 10 feet above the ground, along with a battery energy storage system, a 20-foot-wide gravel access road and a stormwater basin. However, after the company agreed to remove 20% of the panels, the latest designs show a 4.05-megawatt system.
The design also includes an equipment pad. In response to Planning Board member Jeff Lacy’s request at the July hearing, BlueWave Solar moved the proposed site for the battery energy storage system from the middle of the array to behind a barn on the property and added plantings to screen the north side of the equipment pad.
Lacy said he is happy with the change and asked if the BlueWave Solar team could add similar screening to the south side of the equipment pad.
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“I’m just trying to buffer the south side as well as the north side,” Lacy said. “Since we’ve lucked out and have a barn presented to us to work with, why not make the most of it, use a little screening to really make this invisible?”
While BlueWave Solar’s Senior Director Steve McDonough reiterated that the engineers cannot render the equipment pad “invisible,” he plans to run Lacy’s idea by Boyden given that the farmer must still have sufficient access to the barn.
“What I would hope is that we find a balance between his access and screening it from that corner [of Roaring Brook Road],” Forcier said.
Forcier pointed out that BlueWave Solar’s latest plans did not include the former screening along the corner of Roaring Brook Road.
“My biggest concern was the general view of the panels coming down the corner,” Forcier said. “If you put vegetation in that corner, you go a long way in softening the impact of the arrays for folks traveling through there.”
McDonough said the BlueWave Solar team can likely add that screening back in as long as Boyden approves.
The Planning Board also continued to discuss the property’s slopes as it considers a waiver. The town’s bylaw for commercial solar photovoltaic systems requires that the systems sit on slopes with grades of less than 15% while allowing the board to issue waivers for slopes up to 18% “based on site-specific parameters.”
According to BlueWave Solar’s written request for the waiver, approximately 9.3% of the solar array includes slopes between 15% and 18%, which “demonstrates the applicant’s efforts to minimize development on the steeper slopes to the greatest extent practicable.”
The letter argues that the project is a “good opportunity for the board to grant a waiver” due to the area of the panels lying in a field with “existing vegetative cover” and the applicant not proposing “major clearing or grubbing.” The letter claims that disturbances from construction will be limited to the foundations of the panels and BlueWave would restore any damage to the ground through decompacting soil, topsoil and seed. The letter also adds that the slopes fall within the Massachusetts Department of Environmental Protection (MassDEP)’s maximum recommended slope of 33.5%.
Peer reviewer Chris Chamberland then read a memorandum with information to help the Planning Board in its determination of whether to grant BlueWave Solar the waiver. Chamberland mentioned the fact that the project maintains the agricultural purpose of the site and the town’s solar bylaw requires that solar facilities “should be located to minimize impacts to existing agricultural land.” The lack of grading proposed for the project and BlueWave Solar’s latest Stormwater Management Report showing reduced stormwater runoff after development are also considerations that may support the waiver, he said.
Still, Chamberland emphasized that the waiver is “discretionary” and the Planning Board may find that the applicant’s justification for the waiver describes “any well-designed array on an open field,” as opposed to particular conditions to the site. Based on soil mapping, the solar panels with slopes between 15% and 18% sit within “Hydrologic Group C soils” with “moderately low infiltration rates” that generate more runoff than other soils.
The Planning Board decided to look over Chamberland’s comments before the next hearing, when members plan to discuss the waiver further with town counsel. The board plans to discuss the safety concerns that residents and members have raised with the battery energy storage system with Fire Chief Christopher Herrmann at a future hearing after reaching a decision with the slope waiver.
Planning Board member Phyllis Craine also brought up a concern from a past hearing that the construction of the array would disrupt the Conway Grammar School students across the street. In response, McDonough said the pile driving would last four weeks or less due to the sandy soil at the site. At a minimum of 722 feet away from the project, the school would hear the sound of the machinery at about 56 decibels, the same level as a household refrigerator, according to Yale University’s “Decibel Level Comparison Chart,” without taking barriers like the array’s vegetation and building’s walls into consideration.
The next public hearing on the proposed solar array is tentatively scheduled for Tuesday, Oct. 27, at 7 p.m. at Conway Town Hall.

Aalianna Marietta is the South County reporter. She is a graduate of UMass Amherst and was a journalism intern at the Recorder while in school. She can be reached at amarietta@recorder.com or 413-930-4081. More by Aalianna Marietta
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The Ministry of Environment is putting back into operation the photovoltaic panels installed in 2014, with an estimated production of 36,000 kWh annually  Informat.ro
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Developer energyRe closes US$815 million financing for 360MW solar PV portfolio  PV Tech
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Buckyball Breakthrough: Loosening C60 Packing Pushes Perovskite Solar Cells to 27.2% Efficiency
Perovskite solar cells have spent the past decade shattering one efficiency record after another, yet a stubborn culprit has quietly siphoned away their potential: the very molecule engineers trusted to carry electrons out of the device. Now, a large international team led by researchers at the National University of Singapore, Shanghai Jiao Tong University and the University of Potsdam has identified the hidden mechanism behind this energy drain and devised an elegant fix. By infiltrating a vapor of simple trialkylamine molecules into the fullerene electron-transport layer, they loosened the tight packing of C60 buckyballs, suppressed a previously unrecognized recombination pathway, and pushed certified power conversion efficiency to 27.2 percent on a device with an active area of just over one square centimeter. The work, published in Nature Photonics, resolves a long-standing puzzle in perovskite photovoltaics and could reshape how electron contacts are designed across the field.
The heart of the problem lies at the interface between the perovskite light absorber and C60, a spherical carbon molecule resembling a microscopic soccer ball. In inverted, or p-i-n, perovskite solar cells, C60 sits directly on top of the perovskite film and serves as the electron-selective contact, whisking photogenerated electrons toward the external circuit while blocking holes. It is cheap, sublimable, chemically compatible with the delicate perovskite crystal, and forms smooth, uniform films. Yet devices built with C60 contacts consistently suffer from severe non-radiative recombination at that interface, a process in which photoexcited electrons and holes annihilate each other as heat instead of contributing to current or voltage. Previous research campaigns attacked this problem by passivating electronic trap states on the perovskite surface, assuming the perovskite itself was the defective party. Those efforts helped, but the recombination losses never fully disappeared, and the true origin of the loss remained maddeningly obscure.
The Singapore-led team approached the mystery from a different angle: instead of interrogating the perovskite, they scrutinized the electronic structure of the C60 film itself. Using density functional theory calculations, they showed that when C60 molecules pack closely together in a crystalline film, their lowest unoccupied molecular orbitals, the LUMOs, overlap strongly from molecule to molecule. This intermolecular coupling transforms what would be discrete, isolated molecular levels into extended, band-like electronic states that spread across the fullerene film and reach all the way down to the perovskite surface. In isolation, a single C60 molecule is a poor recombination center. But when its LUMO levels merge into a delocalized band that hybridizes with states at the perovskite surface, the interface gains an energetically accessible pathway for electrons and holes to meet and recombine non-radiatively.
To quantify how damaging these band-like states are, collaborators at the University of Potsdam computed carrier capture coefficients for the hybridized interface states, drawing on the multiphonon emission framework that describes how carriers shed energy into lattice vibrations. The calculations indicated that the C60-derived band-like states act as highly efficient recombination conduits, explaining why even well-passivated perovskite surfaces lose voltage the moment C60 is deposited on top. The team confirmed this experimentally by measuring quasi-Fermi-level splitting, a proxy for the maximum voltage a solar cell can deliver, before and after C60 deposition. Depositing pristine C60 onto an already passivated perovskite surface slashed the quasi-Fermi-level splitting by a striking 89 millielectronvolts, a loss large enough to shave roughly a full percentage point off the achievable efficiency.
The remedy the researchers devised is as chemically simple as it is conceptually elegant. Rather than modifying the perovskite, they exposed the C60 film to a vapor of trialkylamines, specifically a long-chain amine designated C18N. The amine molecules intercalate between the buckyballs, wedging them apart and disrupting the ordered molecular packing that enables LUMO overlap. X-ray diffraction measurements using grazing-incidence geometry at the Shanghai Synchrotron Radiation Facility documented the resulting loss of crystallinity in the fullerene film, while time-of-flight secondary ion mass spectrometry confirmed that the amine species distribute through the C60 layer. Transmission electron microscopy provided direct visual evidence of the structural changes. Crucially, the treatment preserves the electronic function of the contact: the decoupled C60 still conducts electrons efficiently, but its LUMO-derived band-like states are substantially weakened, closing the recombination channel at the perovskite interface.
The electrical consequences were immediate and dramatic. The quasi-Fermi-level splitting loss after C60 deposition dropped from 89 millielectronvolts to just 41 millielectronvolts with the amine treatment alone, and fell further to 17 millielectronvolts when combined with conventional perovskite surface passivation. In other words, the team recovered nearly all of the voltage that the fullerene contact had been silently destroying. Photoluminescence quantum yield measurements and impedance spectroscopy corroborated the reduction in non-radiative losses, and femtosecond transient absorption experiments traced the extended carrier lifetimes that result from shutting down the interfacial recombination pathway.
Translated into full devices, the interfacial engineering delivered inverted perovskite solar cells with a certified power conversion efficiency of 27.2 percent and a stabilized output of 26.6 percent on an active area of 1.02 square centimeters. That certification matters: laboratory efficiency records are sometimes reported on tiny cells measured under non-standard conditions, whereas this result was independently verified on a device large enough to be technologically relevant. The achievement places these cells among the most efficient single-junction perovskite devices ever reported and demonstrates that the remaining headroom to the theoretical Shockley-Queisser limit is increasingly limited by losses that engineers can now name, locate and suppress.
Efficiency alone does not make a solar technology viable; stability under real-world conditions does, and this is where perovskites have historically stumbled. The amine-treated devices proved remarkably resilient, retaining more than 98 percent of their initial efficiency after 1,000 hours of continuous illumination under ambient air, without protective encapsulation tricks beyond standard device architecture. This durability suggests that loosening the fullerene packing does not introduce new degradation pathways, and may even contribute to interface robustness by reducing the recombination-driven heating and ionic stress that accelerate failure. For a technology often criticized for degrading within months, thousand-hour endurance at near-record efficiency is a persuasive counterargument.
Beyond the headline numbers, the study carries a broader conceptual lesson for the field. For years, passivation strategies have focused almost exclusively on the perovskite side of every interface, treating the transport layers as chemically inert bystanders. This work demonstrates that the transport layer’s own electronic structure, down to the way its molecules pack and couple, can be the dominant source of recombination. The implication extends well beyond C60: any molecular contact material whose frontier orbitals delocalize into band-like states could be quietly sabotaging device performance, and the same intermolecular decoupling logic could be applied to organic semiconductors, small-molecule contacts and even the charge-selective layers in tandem and multi-junction architectures.
The research also showcases the power of combining atomistic simulation with synchrotron characterization and device engineering under one coordinated program, spanning institutions in Singapore, China and Germany. With perovskite-silicon tandems now approaching and exceeding 29 percent efficiency, every millielectronvolt of interfacial loss recovered translates directly into commercial advantage, and the trialkylamine vapor treatment is a low-cost, scalable post-deposition step compatible with existing fabrication flows. One of the corresponding authors, Yi Hou, is the founder of a perovskite commercialization company, underscoring how quickly laboratory insights of this kind are flowing toward manufacturing. If the buckyball’s destructive band-like states can be tamed with a puff of amine vapor, the path from record-setting cells to durable, mass-produced perovskite modules looks considerably shorter than it did before this interface was finally understood.
Subject of Research: Suppressing interfacial recombination at the C60 electron-selective contact in inverted perovskite solar cells through vapor-phase trialkylamine passivation
Article Title: Intermolecular decoupling of C60 suppresses interfacial recombination in perovskite solar cells
Article References: Intermolecular decoupling of C60 suppresses interfacial recombination in perovskite solar cells. (n.d.). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41566-026-02030-x
Image Credits: AI Generated
DOI: 10.1038/s41566-026-02030-x
Keywords: perovskite solar cells, C60 fullerene, interfacial recombination, trialkylamine passivation, electron transport layer, power conversion efficiency, non-radiative recombination, quasi-Fermi-level splitting, vapor-phase treatment, device stability, Nature Photonics, photovoltaics
News Source: Denise Maddox. (October 13, 2026). Buckyball Breakthrough: Loosening C60 Packing Pushes Perovskite Solar Cells to 27.2% Efficiency. Scienmag.
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Luis Reyes
Oct 13, at 11:00am ET
Solar panels have a big issue. They stop making electricity when the sun goes down, but that’s right when people get home, turn on the TV, and crank up the air conditioning.
For this reason, the solar farm that’s just starting to go up in Arizona’s Mohave County is getting its own batteries. And I mean a lot of them. ContourGlobal, the London-based power producer building it, says Project Sterling will have more than 760,000 solar panels and more than 300 battery containers. Tesla’s already signed up to buy about 90% of what it makes.
Sterling’s site is just off old Route 66, on the stretch between Topock and Kingman. Here, a new 5.2-mile road, Polaris Road, is being built to connect the two. Lake Havasu City, the Arizona town that famously bought London Bridge, is about 20 miles to the south, so a London company setting up shop out there feels about right.
The whole project occupies more than 2,000 acres in the Mojave Desert. (Yes, the county spells it Mohave and the desert spells it Mojave. You get used to it. I almost am.) For comparison, Sterling’s more than 760,000 panels would top the 700,000 we wrote about, which sit on an old Soviet firing range in Germany. Solar’s turned up in odder spots around Arizona, like over an irrigation canal south of Phoenix. But Sterling’s the classic version, with a whole lot of panels spread across open desert.
Figures: ContourGlobal.
Tesla’s deal is a power purchase agreement, which ContourGlobal announced back in July. A power purchase agreement is basically a long-term contract to buy a plant’s electricity at a price agreed up front. It lets a company like Tesla secure a lot of clean power without having to build or operate the plant itself. (Sorta Elon Musk’s whole thing, if you ask me.)
Under the deal, Tesla gets about 1 terawatt-hour a year, which ContourGlobal says is around 90% of what Sterling will produce. A terawatt-hour is a billion kilowatt-hours, and the kilowatt-hour is the unit on your power bill. Tesla also receives the renewable energy certificates that accompany that power, which are essentially receipts that let a company count the electricity as clean.
So where’s all that power going?
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Sterling plugs into lines run by the Western Area Power Administration, the federal agency that sells the power from Hoover Dam, among other things. It also has firm rights to send power over the lines into California, and it’ll be pseudo-tied to California’s grid. A pseudo-tie basically lets a plant that’s physically in one grid operator’s territory act like part of another’s, so California’s grid operator can treat Sterling as one of its own plants. Trade publication pv magazine reported in July that the power’s meant for Tesla’s California operations.
ContourGlobal hasn’t said which Tesla sites will use it, what Tesla’s paying, or how many years the contract runs, and I couldn’t find anything from Tesla on it. This would probably be good to know, but I wouldn’t hold my breath for a price, either, since companies tend to keep those numbers to themselves. And if you’re Tesla, you apparently don’t like sharing data at all.
Antonio Cammisecra, ContourGlobal’s president and CEO, said in the company’s groundbreaking announcement that “our teams engineered the project around the specific needs of our customer.” ContourGlobal bought Sterling while it was still in development and reworked it to meet Tesla’s needs, so it’s basically a made-to-order power plant.
Cammisecra also says Sterling will be able to deliver power for up to 16 hours a day. Basically, the panels handle the daylight, and the batteries handle the evening.
Sterling’s battery system is rated at 360 megawatts and 1.4 gigawatt-hours. If you’re wondering why a battery needs two ratings, think of megawatts as horsepower and gigawatt-hours as the size of the gas tank. One tells you how hard the battery can push, and the other tells you how long it can keep that up. Put it all together and Sterling’s batteries can run flat out for about four hours.
Add a long day of sunshine to about four hours of battery, and you can see how the company gets to 16. I’d guess 16 is a best-case number, though, since a December day in the Mojave is a lot shorter than a June one.
The batteries are lithium iron phosphate (LFP) with liquid cooling and built-in fire protection. LFP cells hold a little less energy than the nickel-heavy ones in a lot of EVs. They’re a lot less likely to catch fire, though, which you’d probably want if you’re parking more than 300 containers of them in the desert. As far as I can tell, neither of ContourGlobal’s announcements names a battery supplier. Tesla, the customer here, sells its own shipping-container-sized Megapack batteries to power companies, so I’m pretty curious whose cells end up inside.
You’ll see Sterling described both ways. And they’re both right. Solar panels produce direct current, and Sterling’s panels are rated at 509 megawatts. The 450 is what the plant can actually send to the grid once inverters turn that into alternating current, the kind that comes out of your wall outlet.
The panel maker doesn’t seem to have been named either, so I can’t tell you how big each panel is. Divide 509 megawatts by 760,000 panels, though, and each one works out to somewhere around 670 watts.
ContourGlobal’s July announcement had one line that’s easy to skim past. It said work on Sterling had already started last year through “off-site physical work of significant nature,” including the purchase of major equipment.
I doubt that wording was an accident. The IRS uses almost the same phrase, “physical work of a significant nature,” as its test for when a solar project has officially started construction. For a plant that won’t be finished until 2028, that start date decides whether it can still claim the federal tax credits for wind and solar that Congress started phasing out last year. I couldn’t find anything from ContourGlobal on whether Sterling is claiming them.
If you’re planning a Route 66 road trip, the stretch between Topock and Kingman will probably be a little busier than usual for a while. ContourGlobal expects an average of about 400 people working on Sterling during construction, and it’s aiming to have the plant up and running in 2028.
Don’t bite your tongue. Speak up.
Luis Reyes · Oct 10, 2026
Luis Reyes · Oct 1, 2026
Chema Bonilla Díaz · Sep 23, 2026
Olivia Richman · Sep 18, 2026
Luis Reyes · Oct 6, 2026
Luis Reyes · Oct 2, 2026
Chema Bonilla Díaz · Oct 13, 2026
Luis Reyes · Oct 13, 2026
Olivia Richman · Oct 13, 2026
Luis Reyes · Oct 13, 2026
Olivia Richman · Oct 13, 2026
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Top Hybrid Solar Inverters And Rooftop Solar Panels Under Rs. 60,000 For Modern Homes, Starting Under Rs. 8  News18
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BarcelonaThe president of the Port of Barcelona, José Alberto Carbonell; the CEO of the Grimaldi Group in Spain, Mario Massarotti, and the Director of Institutional Relations, Miguel Pardo, inaugurated this Tuesday the new vertical parking facility at the port with a photovoltaic plant on the roof. The new parking facility, located next to the Grimaldi Terminal, has a capacity for nearly 2,000 new vehicles and more than 6,200 square meters of solar panels, which will produce 1,695 MWh annually, an amount exceeding the terminal’s consumption.
The final objective is to connect the photovoltaic plant to the grid to avoid production losses, and in any case, a battery plant with a capacity of 1.3 MW has been installed. Carbonell stated that this infrastructure is a sign “of Grimaldi’s trust in the Port and its community” and that they are responding to the need to better utilize space by growing vertically.
Massarotti highlighted the company’s commitment to promoting the ecological transition in transport and underscored that, so far, the company has invested 50 million euros in the Port of Barcelona. In this regard, the head of the shipping company explained that the silo will serve for the storage of new vehicles, especially those coming from China, as he stated that the Asian country exports 250,000 cars to Spain every year and they need this storage capacity.
In this regard, the CEO of Grimaldi in Spain explained that they have incorporated 17 car carriers into their fleet, 14 of which are already operating, and that they have purchased 10 more to increase this fleet in the coming years. For his part, Pardo highlighted that the terminal can no longer grow in surface area, which is why they have opted for vertical growth, a fact that has allowed them to gain 37,500 square meters of surface area.

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The close takes Zelestra’s project financing past $1 billion in the U.S.
October 13, 2026
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Renewable energy developer Zelestra has secured $350 million in green financing for its 203 MW Reclamation Solar project in Gibson County, Indiana.
Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce (CIBC), BBVA, and Societe Generale provided the financing.
The project is backed by a long-term power purchase agreement with Meta and is expected to become operational by the end of 2027. The Reclamation Solar project is under construction on land previously used for coal mining operations in southwestern Indiana. It is expected to support approximately 200 jobs during peak construction.
Sybil Milo Cioffi, Zelestra’s US CFO, said: “Passing $1 billion in U.S. project financing this year is a milestone we are pleased to share with our lenders and our customers. Reclamation is a major project that will deliver many benefits to our customer, and to the wider community. We are pleased that CIBC, BBVA and Societe Generale are backing our ambition. These partnerships enable us to keep building at the pace this market needs.”
With this transaction, Zelestra’s total project financing raised in the U.S. in 2026 has reached $1.14 billion. According to the company, the financing will support the construction of more than 800 MW of new solar capacity across the country.
In August 2026, the company closed $181 million in green project financing for its 136 MW Skull Creek solar project in Anderson County, Texas, which is under construction and is expected to begin commercial operations by the end of 2027.
Zelestra also secured a $600 million green financing credit facility in March with Société Générale and HSBC for the 252 MW Echols Gove project in Lamar County and the 187 MW Cedar Range solar project in Hopkins County in Texas.
Zelestra is expanding its U.S. operations to meet growing demand for renewable energy from hyperscalers and corporate customers. Headquartered in Arlington, Virginia, the company has a development pipeline of approximately 16 GW across major U.S. markets.
Announced large-scale solar project funding increased by 71% in the first half of 2026 compared with the funding raised in the same period in 2025, according to Mercom’s recently released 1H and Q2 2026 Solar Funding and M&A report.
Renu
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© 2026 by Mercom Capital Group, LLC. All Rights Reserved.

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Building better solar tech, a crystal at a time  Princeton Materials Institute
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