One of Standard Solar’s community solar projects in Minnesota

Standard Solar Inc. has acquired a 6.97 MW, 17,785-panel community solar project in Trenton, Maine. This acquisition adds to the company’s existing 50 MW portfolio in the state.

“This newest addition to our ownership portfolio in Maine signifies an important step in our push to bring cleaner energy to business and communities and our nation closer to its decarbonization goals,” says Harry Benson, director of business development at Standard Solar. “Standard Solar is always seeking opportunities to fund and acquire additional projects, and we were quick to capitalize on Maine’s 2019 decision to embrace policies that support solar growth.”

The project, part of the state’s Net Energy Billing (NEB), will bring a 15-25% energy savings to nine leading Maine businesses who have subscribed, sharing the benefits without having to connect to it or invest in its development. NEB, overseen by the Maine Public Utilities Commission, enables businesses and municipalities to receive financial benefits from clean energy produced by a local solar array.

Trenton’s first large-scale community solar project will bring clean energy savings, local economic development and increased resiliency to these area businesses for many years.

“We expect community solar to be a critical part of Maine’s energy mix going forward,” adds Benson.

The solar farm will generate an estimated 10,345 MWh of clean energy each year. The project utilizes bifacial solar modules – double-sided panels that will help the system generate an additional 15% of output from ground reflection, something particularly advantageous given Maine’s snowy winters. The project is expected to be completed by summer 2022.

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Black & Veatch has been selected by Silicon Ranch Corp. to build a sprawling, 125 MW AC solar array in Lee County in southwestern Georgia. Once construction is completed later this year, the DeSoto I Solar Farm will be among the biggest solar installations in the Southeast.

Nashville-based Silicon Ranch developed and is funding the project and will own, operate and maintain it for the long-term, a disciplined approach the company takes with every project it develops.

“As renewable energy continues to progress in a world rapidly focusing on decarbonization, this effort further demonstrates how carbon footprints can be minimized without disrupting the surrounding ecosystem,” says Paul Skurdahl, Black & Veatch’s senior vice president of renewable solutions. “This project aligns with our proven record of innovative approaches to delivering clean, affordable energy.”

DeSoto I will integrate Silicon Ranch’s trademark Regenerative Energy land-management model, which co-locates solar energy production with regenerative agriculture practices. Once construction is complete, Silicon Ranch will restore the land to a functioning grassland ecosystem while keeping the project in agricultural production through managed sheep grazing using regenerative land management practices.

“As the long-term owner and operator of our projects, Silicon Ranch is committed to supporting the communities we serve, and we’re pleased to work with Black & Veatch to execute this vision in Lee County,” states Reagan Farr, Silicon Ranch’s co-founder and CEO. “Thousands of Georgia residents have already helped us build more than a dozen world-class facilities in the region, and we will work with Black & Veatch and our partners in Lee County to recruit local talent for DeSoto I as well.”

Image: Photo by Jadon Kelly on Unsplash

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Josiah Mault

The Renewables Consulting (RCG), an ERM Group company, is ramping up its North America team in anticipation of significant growth with the appointments of Josiah Mault and Jesse Broehl. Over the coming months, RCG plans to accelerate its hiring in North America to as many as 30 staff through a combination of local experts and experienced offshore wind professionals.

Josiah Mault joins RCG as a principal and will be based out of Boston. An experienced professional in wind resource and energy assessment, Mault was formerly the senior team leader and offshore energy assessment lead at DNV.

Jesse Broehl is a principal and will be based out of RCG’s New York office. Before joining RCG, Broehl was an experienced research analyst and has held senior research positions with the American Clean Power Association and Guidehouse Research (formerly Navigant Consulting).

“Renewable energy in the Americas is booming and RCG is an enviable position to help developers, organizations and institutions pursue in their low-carbon ambitions,” says Doug Pfeister, managing director for the Americas. “The appointments of Josiah and Jesse not only bolster our core competencies but also signal a period of rapid expansion in North America.”

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NewHydrogen Inc. is beginning to provide green hydrogen generators to intermittent renewable power sites, such as wind and solar farms, to demonstrate economic viability and new technology under development. Under the terms of a manufacturing supply agreement, Verde LLC, a Massachusetts-based manufacturer of green hydrogen generation systems, will supply the company with hydrogen generation systems.

“We are very excited about our new business relationship with Verde and our plan to partner with operators of intermittent renewable power sites, such as wind and solar farms,” says David Lee, CEO of NewHydrogen. “Verde will manufacture the systems for NewHydrogen, which the company will purchase for use at the sites.”

The company is targeting wind and solar farms which produce excess solar and wind energy during certain times of the day. This power can be used to run an electrolyzer (the primary component in a hydrogen generator) that converts water into green hydrogen, which is distributed in pipelines and converted back into electricity when needed. This green hydrogen can be stored in tanks and underground caverns, forming a network that can energize industry and back up electric grids. Having the flexibility to redirect unused energy capacity into making fuels can fill the gap between constant energy demands and variable energy resources.

“For NewHydrogen, this is a major leap forward,” Dr. Lee adds. “By owning and controlling the hydrogen generators at these sites, we will be able to move very rapidly to demonstrate the economic viability of this approach, as well as new technology currently under development including our breakthrough catalysts.”

The goal of NewHydrogen’s sponsored research at UCLA is to lower the cost of green hydrogen by eliminating or drastically reducing the use of precious metals in electrolyzers. Electrolyzers currently rely on rare earth materials such as iridium and platinum. These materials often account for nearly 50% of the cost of electrolyzers.

In 2021, the sponsored program at UCLA developed a non-precious metal-based catalyst with significant improvement of oxygen evolution reaction (OER) in acidic conditions for proton exchange membrane (PEM) electrolyzers. Researchers then improved the catalyst performance by modifying the structure and optimizing loading conditions. Most recently, application of a unique surface engineering technique further improved the long-term stability of the catalyst. Higher stability implies reduced operating cost of electrolyzers in the longer term.

In a parallel effort, researchers have been developing hydrogen evolution reaction (HER) catalysts for alkaline electrolyzers. Their work is focused on developing platinum based HER catalysts that use significantly less platinum, as well as a totally new type of HER catalyst that does not use platinum at all. To date, significant progress has been made on both fronts. This is in line with the Company’s focus on developing OER catalysts to enable electrolyzers that cost less to manufacture and to operate.

“Prior to scaling up the process for studies with a prototype electrolyzer in late 2022, researchers will continue to explore additional improvements to both the OER and the HER catalysts to maximize the overall performance of an actual water electrolysis device,” Dr. Lee concludes.

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Image: Andy Colthorpe / Solar Media.

Responding to increasing demand for dispatchable renewable energy resources, GE Renewable Energy has opened a factory for ‘Renewable Hybrid’ technology solutions and equipment in Chennai, India. 

It will manufacture the company’s containerised inverter solution, FLEXINVERTER, which is claimed to be a plug and play unit suitable for solar and energy storage applications at utility-scale, and FLEXRESERVOIR, an integrated battery energy storage and power electronics solution which can be flexibly configured to deliver multiple market applications. 

Both products will also be integrated into GE Renewable Energy’s new digital platform, FLEXIQ, which enables customers to design projects, operate them and manage them at fleet level. The company claimed FLEXIQ enables grid compliance as well as maximising customer lifetime value. 

Apparently the factory employs 250 workers, which was the only indication given by GE Renewable Energy of its size and production capacity. Energy-Storage.news has asked for further details on those metrics, as well as on any plans to ramp up production in response to customer demand, but had yet to receive a reply at the time of publication. 

“As the industry and customers’ demand dispatchable renewable energy to navigate the energy transition, the need for hybrid systems is increasing exponentially,” Prakash Chandra, CEO for Renewable Hybrids at GE Renewable Energy said as the factory’s opening was announced yesterday.

FLEXRESERVOIR is scalable from a rated power of 3MW to 500+MW with the addition of more inverters, with durations of less than an hour to more than four hours with the addition of more battery storage units. 

FLEXINVERTER is available as a solar PV inverter, or for use with battery energy storage systems (BESS), with DC and AC coupling configuration options and advanced grid features and reactive power control. 

The FLEXIQ plant control platform provides integration for standalone solar PV, PV-plus-BESS and PV-plus-wind-plus-BESS configurations, accommodating AC and DC coupling as well as standalone configurations. It can manage voltage, power factor and reactive power capabilities, and incorporates PV signals into the SCADA at overall plant level. 

GE Renewable Energy said the new factory will be able to full produce and integrate systems on site. It is in a central location with national highway connections, as well as accessibility to air and sea transport routes, the company said.  

In a recent report into India’s lithium-ion battery manufacturing space, issued by research group JMK Research and Analytics with the international Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis (IEEFA), it was pointed out that renewable energy sector-driven demand for battery storage is expected to grow significantly in the country. 

While 90% of battery demand will be driven by the automotive sector, grid-scale energy storage will be needed, not least of all to help integrate the 450GW of renewable energy resources the government aims to have online in India by 2030. 

The country already has fairly well established domestically-located battery pack manufacturing facilities, but is yet to move forward on large capacity additions of battery cell production, the report said. The Union government is looking to support advanced chemistry cell manufacturing with incentives for up to 50GWh of production facilities from foreign or Indian companies building factories in the country. 

According to JMK and IEEFA, a large market for grid-scale battery storage in India is “still a few years away,” largely due to the relatively high cost. As of last March the country only had about 30MW of solar that was paired with just under 20MWh of battery storage at grid-scale but the ongoing addition of renewable energy capacity will drive demand for projects supported by BESS to firm up that power output.

“With the need for an assured renewable energy-integrated power supply bound to grow significantly in the future, lithium-based BESS will become critical in this (grid-scale renewable energy integration) market segment,” the report said.

In the country’s most recent Union Budget, announced last week, energy storage systems became eligible for classification as infrastructure, opening up pathways for loans and investment financing in a move warmly welcomed by the industry. This followed the Ministry of Power issuing a clarification of the status of energy storage systems in India’s power sector, describing the technologies as “essential” to achieving renewable energy aims.

International energy storage tech provider Fluence has said it will launch a joint venture to take on the Indian market with one of its biggest players in renewable energy, ReNew Power, later this year.

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An example of a neighbourhood battery system in West Australia, installed in a
trial by Western Power. Image: Western Power.

Sometimes called ‘community batteries,’ energy storage systems are being installed at neighbourhood level in Australia. Experts from the Australian National University explain how this type of battery storage can benefit a very wide range of stakeholders.

This is an extract of an article which appeared in Vol.29 of PV Tech Power, Solar Media’s quarterly technical journal for the downstream solar industry. Every edition includes ‘Storage & Smart Power,’ a dedicated section contributed by the team at Energy-Storage.news.

As Australia transitions its electricity supply away from fossil fuel-powered generators to renewable sources of energy, neighbourhood batteries are becoming an increasingly popular form of storage. There are more than one dozen neighbourhood battery projects currently underway across Australia, with a range of ownership and operation models.

It is now, in the early days of neighbourhood battery research development, design and demonstration that we can evaluate the various models and trade-offs inherent in these models. Technology can end up not meeting user needs, or result in negative unintended consequences if we don’t step back to understand their impacts early on.

In the Battery Storage and Grid Integration Program at the Australian National University we have been conducting numerous studies that delve into the socio-techno-economic aspects of neighbourhood batteries.

Our research has revealed that this type of battery can provide a range of benefits for all energy stakeholders, be they energy network operators, energy retailers, market operators, customers, governments, or local councils.

What these batteries have in common is that they are all located close to customers, connected to the distribution network, and can provide stored energy for up to hundreds of homes.

They range in size from a wardrobe to a shipping container, have power capacities of about 0.1 – 5MW and complement household and utility-scale batteries.

Reversing a trend of ‘haves and have nots’

What makes neighbourhood batteries a particularly interesting form of energy storage is that they have the potential to address energy equity and provide benefits to all energy users. Some groups of people, particularly renters and those who do not have solar panels on their rooftops, but also people who might be socially and digitally isolated could all benefit from neighbourhood batteries.

These benefits could be economical, or an increased sense of autonomy and control over their local energy management. This contrasts with how rooftop solar has played out in the Australian context.

Historically residential solar has been a tale of the ‘haves’ and the ‘have-nots’.

Those who can afford to put solar panels on their roof and those who cannot.

Household solar uptake has not happened alongside a broader conversation about what kind of energy system we want. Neighbourhood batteries can hopefully spark those conversations. Our research tells us that people really want to be a part of these conversations and have long felt disconnected from energy decisions that affect them.

Neighbourhood batteries are sometimes referred to as ‘community batteries’ or ‘community energy storage’. We elect not to use these terms because the word ‘community’ implies a degree of community involvement.

Some neighbourhood battery projects absolutely do have this element and we suggest community involvement is required as a principle. It is also the case that other models are allowed in Australia’s current regulatory system that requires little or no involvement from the community. To encompass all models, we use the term neighbourhood batteries.

582kW / 583kWh battery storage system in the remote town of Marble Bar deployed this year by state government-owned electricity supplier Horizon Power. Image: Horizon Power.

Australia, the distributed energy resources superstar

Australia leads the world in the uptake of rooftop solar, per capita, with one in four homes with residential PV. Three million solar systems have been installed nationwide, that’s nearly 1kW of panels per person. It is the enthusiastic adoption of rooftop solar by people that has made the country a distributed energy resources superstar.

Integrating this vast amount of solar generation is a major challenge for network operators and there are several ways Australia is tackling this problem from smart software solutions, utility-scale storage, pumped storage and various demand response and other market mechanisms.

In Australia, also notably in the US states of California and Texas and many parts of Europe, grid operators are resorting to solar curtailment when there is not enough transmission capacity to cope with the generation of renewable energy.

The infamous ‘duck curve’ graph indicates the discrepancy between peak electricity demand versus peak solar energy production. Neighbourhood batteries have a role to play in capturing the excess energy generation and storing it until it is needed. But this is just one of the benefits of this type of battery.

Defining and assessing the benefits

The ability to provide benefits to many stakeholders is one of the key reasons why we felt it was important to comprehensively investigate the opportunities for neighbourhood batteries. There are four key elements that describe a range of possible battery models.

» Battery ownership – who will own the battery, and what regulatory considerations might arise due to ownership? Crucially, how might battery ownership influence the prioritisation of benefits to different stakeholders?

» Stakeholder participation – who is a stakeholder in the battery’s operation, and what is their legal and operational relationship with the battery? How do stakeholders benefit from their participation, and what technology is necessary to enable the battery operation?

» Network tariffs – what network tariffs are applied to energy flows into and out of the neighbourhood battery, and how do network tariffs unlock or impact the benefits that can be delivered to stakeholders?

» Services delivered – what market services, such as energy arbitrage and frequency support, can neighbourhood batteries deliver? What non-market services, such as network support (demand response, voltage regulation), do neighbourhood batteries deliver? How can services be value stacked to maximise the battery’s utilisation and cost-effectiveness? Or maybe, due to community discussion, the most ‘optimal’ outcome may actually be an optimisation they can understand, meaning, perhaps not all value streams will be accessed.

By undertaking a socio-techno-economic analysis of various permutations of these four key considerations, we have been able to assess how different neighbourhood batteries create value for energy users, distribution networks, electricity retailers and the broader electricity system. Our work has so far revealed that neighbourhood batteries can deliver five essential benefits.

They can:1. Improve the fairness of the energy system2. Build trust in the energy system by sharing value transparently3. Increase the hosting capacity of the network4. Bolster local resilience, including socially, economically, and electrically5. Be cost effective by delivering services to many stakeholders.

We note that more benefits may become clear as we roll out this technology at scale.

Artist’s impression of a neighbourhood battery system on a street in Melbourne, Victoria. Image: Pixii

The economics of neighbourhood batteries

The issue of network tariff reform has historically been a contentious one in Australia, in the context of high uptake of household solar. We have studied the operation of neighbourhood batteries under a range of local network tariff models, using current Australian electricity prices and current network prices as a reference.

Our modelling shows that neighbourhood batteries would only be financially feasible if the local network tariff was discounted. This is due to the tariff applying to both the charging and discharging of the battery, meaning the system is double-charged.

Previous proposals to address this issue have generally either applied a discount to network tariffs for local energy flows or created a secondary energy market for peer-to-peer transactions. The former is expected to result in a zero-sum wealth transfer between networks and customers, and the latter has faced implementation and regulatory complexities.

Our modelling, however, demonstrates that a discounted local use of system (LUOS) network tariff could be introduced without the expected zero-sum wealth transfer, if a neighbourhood battery is included in the local system. This is due to the increased number of transactions on the network as the battery charges and discharges, such that the network receives the same revenue even though the network tariff is discounted. Network charges incurred by the neighbourhood battery owner can be offset by the revenue earnt from energy arbitrage.

In this way, all stakeholders (network, customers, battery owner) can be financially better off compared to a system with no neighbourhood battery and the normal network tariff.

The clear recommendation from our analysis is that the price of LUOS needs to be less than half of conventional distribution network tariffs, allowing for mutually beneficial economic outcomes for all stakeholders.

This is an extract of an article from Volume 29 of PV Tech Power, our quarterly journal. You can buy individual issues digitally or in print, as well as subscribe to get every volume as soon as it comes out. PV Tech Power subscriptions are also included in some packages for our new PV Tech Premium service.

About the Authors

Sarah Wilson is communications manager for the Battery Storage and Grid Integration Program at the Australian National University. 

Hedda Ransan-Cooper leads the social research at the Battery Storage and Grid Integration Program at the Australian National Unversity.

Bjorn Sturmberg is a research leader in the Battery Storage and Grid Integration Program at the Australian National University.

Lachlan Blackhall is entrepreneurial fellow and head, Battery Storage and Grid Integration Program at The Australian National University.

Marnie Shaw is a senior research fellow in the School of Engineering and a research leader in the Battery Storage and Grid Integration Program at the Australian National University. 

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View of First Solar’s jet black thin-film PV modules at the site. Image: SJCE / Terra-Gen.

San Jose Clean Energy, a non-profit electricity supplier in California, has celebrated the completion of a solar-plus-storage project which will ensure the delivery of carbon-free electricity during evening peak times. 

The supplier held an online press conference on 2 February to officially inaugurate the Kern Solar and Storage Battery Project, which was brought online by developer Terra-Gen on 31 December 2021.

Under a 12-year power purchase agreement (PPA) signed with San Jose Clean Energy, Terra-Gen guarantees that 62MW of energy from the facility will be available to the supplier’s member-customers between 6pm and 10pm each day. 

This is the period after solar production has tailed off for the day and evening demand for power from homes and businesses in San Jose, the largest city in Silicon Valley. The city is targeting becoming carbon neutral by 2030, which will make it the US’ first, and SJCE’s 350,000 customer accounts representing about a million people will be a big part of that, city mayor Sam Liccardo said at the press conference. 

Liccardo said the 62MW of power is equivalent to about 20% of SJCE’s demand, but more importantly the project addresses the intermittency, or variability, challenge that renewable energy brings to the grid. 

In effect, clean energy will be supplied from the project for 16 hours a day, seven days a week, SJCE director Lori Mitchell pointed out. It is also the first project to come online from a US$1 billion investment commitment into four large-scale solar and wind projects by SJCE, one of California’s Community Choice Aggregator (CCA) energy suppliers. 

One of the next in that list will be another 100MW project by Terra-Gen, for which the CCA has signed a 15-year PPA, expected to come online during this year. 

The Kern project is at the Edwards Air Force Base site in California’s Central Valley, in Kern County where many of the state’s large solar — and wind — farms are located. 

Aerial view of the project, built on land leased from Edwards Airforce Base. Leasing revenue will go towards maintaining the base’s mission, Terra-Gen’s Simon Day said. Image: SJCE / Terra-Gen.

Terra-Gen, which will own and operate the project, already has a 2GW wind energy power plant nearby, and the project for SJCE is part of a much larger solar and storage facility it is building at Edwards Airforce Base. 

In fact the plant — or rather the vast complex — referred to as the Edwards & Sanborn project, is thought to be the world’s largest combined solar-plus-storage facility to date. Aiming to eventually reach 760MW of PV and 2,445MWh of battery storage, Terra-Gen closed US$804 million financing for its initial 346MWac PV and 1,501MWh of batteries in August last year.

Off-taker deals have been signed with a range of different parties, from corporates like Starbucks to other CCAs and some portions of the project have already been delivering.  

Simon Day, VP and head of solar development at Terra-Gen said that for the SJCE deal, the developer built an oversized 118MW solar PV array at the site, as well as additional new battery storage. 

It is also able to use other resources such as wind from the company’s portfolio to firm the delivery of clean energy for 16 hours a day, in what he described as a “groundbreaking” arrangement for the solar industry. 

Day said the project had been constructed quickly, from permitting in November 2020 to coming online by the end of 2021, using union labour. The solar array was installed by Mortenson Construction, comprising US company First Solar’s thin-film PV modules. 

In response to a media question as to why build the clean energy capacity for SJCE in Kern, some 250 miles from San Jose, Simon Day said that Kern’s planning commission is “robust,” and has a “very defined set of rules,” meaning developers like his company are aware of what they need to do to meet local requirements and don’t expect surprise changes to be sprung upon them. 

While the power generated and stored will go to SJCE’s members, Kern County residents will also benefit because the solar-plus-storage resources at Edwards Airforce Base will help relieve stress on the grid and can provide additional power to the CAISO grid as needed. 

SJCE’s Lori Mitchell noted that Kern County has longer hours of sunshine each day that San Jose, making it economical to site large-scale solar in that area. Mayor Sam Liccardo acknowledged the ongoing regulatory uncertainty over rooftop solar in California, arguing that the state needs a combination of distributed rooftop solar and large-scale solar arrays. 

The city hoped regulators at the California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC) would become more supportive of rooftop solar, but if that does not become the case, “you will see many more large arrays,” Liccardo said. 

It was also important to note, however, said local community leader Quyen Vuong of Vietnamese-American engagement group ICAN, that the Kern Solar + Storage Battery Project offers the benefits of clean solar energy to renters and those on lower incomes that might not be able to host solar on their own rooftops. 

Allowing renters to have a say in improving air quality and supporting cleaner energy is important, Vuong said, because not only are they equally deserving customers, but can become great partners and ambassadors in the community for clean energy. 

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By-products of the treatment process at Reiling GmbH, from which the solar cell fragments are separated and collected (left). Purified silicon and wafers made from 100% recycled silicon (middle). PERC solar cells made of 100 % recycled silicon with an efficiency of 19.7% (right).

Image: Fraunhofer ISE

Around 10,000 tons of silicon in discarded photovoltaic (PV) modules end up on the recycling market annually in Germany. This figure will rise to several hundred thousand tons per year by 2029. Currently, the aluminum, glass and copper of the discarded modules are reprocessed; however, the silicon solar cells are not. In order to be able to reuse the silicon, researchers from the Fraunhofer Center for Silicon Photovoltaics CSP and the Fraunhofer Institute for Solar Energy Systems ISE, together with German PV module recycling company Reiling GmbH & Co. KG, have developed a solution, in which the silicon in the discarded modules was recycled on an industrial scale and reused to produce new PERC solar cells.

Most PV systems in Germany were installed between 2009 and 2011 during the first wave of PV expansion.

“This expansion will foreseeably be followed by a first wave of disposal twenty years later, around 2029, when the feed-in tariff for the installed PV modules expires,” explains Prof. Dr. Andreas Bett, institute director of Fraunhofer ISE. “Therefore, it is necessary to establish adequate processes and procedures for recovering the silicon material from the discarded modules at an early stage.” Already in 2021, the total installed quantity of PV modules in Germany was about five million tons, with a silicon content of 150,000 tons. As a semiconductor material, silicon is the main component of solar cells.”

A working group at Fraunhofer CSP, together with Reiling GmbH & Co. KG, has therefore developed a process for recovering the silicon material with funding from the German Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Climate BMWK (formerly BMWi). With this process, it is possible to recycle all crystalline silicon PV modules, regardless of manufacturer and origin.

“If this were not the case, then this would be far too much work for the recycling companies,” explains Prof. Dr. Peter Dold, project manager at Fraunhofer CSP. “It was important for us to develop a scalable process that makes economic sense. A lot is possible in the lab, but our new process should prove itself in the practice for the recycling industry.”

For the process, solar cell fragments are separated and collected from by-products of the mechanical recycling process, which is already established. At Fraunhofer CSP, the cell fragments with sizes from 0.1 to 1 millimeter are first freed from the glass and plastic by various sorting processes. This is followed by the step-by-step removal of the backside contact, the silver contacts, the anti-reflective layer and finally the emitter by wet chemical etching. The silicon cleaned in this way is processed into monocrystalline or quasi-monocrystalline ingots in standard processes and then into wafers.

The crystallization is carried out with 100% recycled silicon without the addition of commercial ultrapure silicon. The wafers made of recycled silicon were fabricated into PERC solar cells at Fraunhofer ISE’s PV-TEC. In the first trial, the solar cell conversion efficiency was 19.7%.

“This is below the efficiency of today’s premium PERC solar cells, which have an efficiency of around 22.2 percent, but it is certainly above that of the solar cells in the old, discarded modules,” says Dold.

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H3 Dynamics is debuting a new robots-as-a-service solution for autonomous solar farm monitoring in partnership with Sitemark, a specialist AI-analytics company from Belgium.

The new partnership combines the DBX drone-in-a-box robots from H3 Dynamics with visual and thermal analytics from Sitemark to automate and scale up remote monitoring operations in large solar farm installations. Sitemark’s solutions have been deployed by Total, Bouygues, EDF, Engie and Orix to inspect over 30,000 ha of solar PV parks in 35 countries.

Designed as the “eyes and ears” of solar farm owners and operators, the DBX robot (video) can be deployed permanently at solar farms to track solar farm construction progress, identify solar panel degradation and provide on-site security.

“The unique combination of Sitemark Fuse and H3 Dynamics’ DBX will change the way data is captured and processed throughout the entire lifecycle of solar power assets,” says Michiko Lloyd, CEO of Sitemark.

H3 Dynamics is automating inspections across smart cities, precision agriculture, water infrastructure and ports. Last month, the company announced DBX G7, an agnostic drone-in-a-box platform capable of automating drones from any manufacturer, and deploying expert analytics from any developer.

“Our goal is to provide the world’s best data services from specialist vendors all over the world, available at any of our DBX installations globally” comments Taras Wankewycz, H3 Dynamics’ CEO.

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Some of the first solar panels being installed during Los Santos Solar I’s construction
(Source: North American Development Bank)

MPC Energy Solutions (MPCES) has completed the acquisition of Los Santos Solar I project, located in the state of Chihuahua, Mexico.

The plant is operational since 2017 and has a capacity of 15.8 MWp, with the potential to be extended to 90 MWp. The project has a USD-denominated power purchase agreement (PPA) with Leoni Cable, a German cable manufacturer, and the International De La Salle Educational Network. The U.S. government’s Development Finance Corporation (DFC) and the North American Development Bank (NADB) provided a 20-year project funding.

“Los Santos Solar I contributes towards Mexico’s goals of achieving 50 percent of electricity generation from clean energy by 2050 and reducing the levels of greenhouse gas emissions by 50 percent,” says Martin Vogt, CEO of MPC Energy Solutions. “We are pleased with the swift completion of this project acquisition that marks our first operational asset in Mexico. We would like to thank Buenavista Renewables (BVR) for their excellent cooperation during this process and we are looking forward to a continued collaboration for the future expansion of this project.”

In 2020, according to the International Energy Agency (IEA), power generation from renewables accounted for 18.8% of the total electricity produced in Mexico. This is a 28.55% increase in renewables power generation since 2015.

“We are excited to have our first operational project in the portfolio reinforcing our commitment to assist Latin America diversifying its energy mix towards cleaner sources and helping create resilience in the region,” adds Martin Vogt.

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