The huge upsurge in lithium-ion battery deployment expected over the next two decades poses a problem: what to do with cells that have reached the end of their useful life. Stefan Hogg investigates the importance of lithium recyling in the transition to a low carbon energy system.
The rapid acceleration in energy storage deployment expected over the coming years will require innovation in the quality and safety standards underpinning new battery and associated technologies. VDE’s Jan Geder looks at the technical work underway to ensure the coming storage boom has firm bankability and insurability foundations.
The EU’s clean energy policy framework for the first time recognises energy storage as a key part of the future energy system. It is far from perfect, but lays the foundation for storage to become an integral part of efforts to decarbonise the energy system, writes Brittney Elzarei.
California’s success in embracing renewable energy technologies, particularly solar, has brought with it challenges around reliability of supply to consumers. Janice Lin and Jack Chang of Strategen explore how the Golden State is pioneering the deployment of energy storage as it pursues its goal of complete energy decarbonisation by 2045.
New technologies and designs aimed at driving down the cost of energy storage facilities are currently the focus of intense industry R&D. Sara Verbruggen reports on DC coupling, an emerging system architecture that many believe will soon become the industry standard.
The business models and technologies underpinning the development of stationary energy storage markets are evolving rapidly. Dr. Kai-Philipp Kairies, Jan Figgener and David Haberschusz look at some of the key trends driving the sector forward.
Despite the huge strides energy storage has made, significant hurdles remain before the technology in its many guises can be claimed to have fulfilled its massive potential. Introducing a PV Tech Power energy storage special report, Andy Colthorpe assesses the key successes and ongoing challenges for this indispensable part of the future power system.
Photovoltaics International’s annual analysis of PV manufacturers, research and development (R&D) spending in 2018 includes 21 companies that were public listed on various stock exchanges around the world. R&D spending data was taken from audited annual financial reports and converted to US dollars at the time of the reports being published. The analysis in this 2018 report is intended to provide a good representation of global R&D spending trends in the PV wafer, cell and module segments of the upstream solar market.
This paper reports on the latest advances in passivated emitter and rear cell (PERC)-based shingled solar cell activities at Fraunhofer ISE. The approach taken is to fabricate 6" host wafers from
Czochralski-grown silicon and separate them after metallization and contact firing into bifacial p-type shingled passivated edge, emitter and rear (pSPEER) solar cells.
Heterojunction technology is currently a hot topic actively discussed in the silicon PV community. Hevel recently became one of the first companies to adopt its old micromorph module line for manufacturing high-efficiency silicon heterojunction (SHJ) solar cells and modules. On the basis of Hevel’s own experience, this paper looks at all the production steps involved, from wafer texturing through to final module assembly.
