Wednesday, 1 July 2026

CHN Energy brought its integrated solar, hydrogen and battery storage complex online on June 10, 2026, after joint commissioning confirmed each subsystem hit its design targets, pv magazine reported.

At the core sits a 400 MW coastal photovoltaic plant that reached full-capacity grid connection on April 29, 2025. Alongside it run a 60 MW/120 MWh battery and an electrolyzer facility rated at 1,500 Nm3 per hour, both tied into a 220 kV shore-based substation.

Electrolyzer and balance-of-plant systems are still in their last commissioning stage, and the company expects hydrogen output to start in August 2026.

Annual solar generation is projected at about 468 GWh, enough to cover the yearly power demand of nearly 200,000 households, according to CHN Energy. At sustained operation the hydrogen plant is designed to yield 482 tons of high-purity green hydrogen a year.

A dedicated submarine cable links the photovoltaic plant straight to the electrolyzer. During high-generation hours, that cable lets surplus solar power reach the electrolyzer without first routing through the public grid.

The 120 MWh battery gives two hours of discharge at its 60 MW rating, buffering output before it feeds the substation or the hydrogen line. Its 482-ton annual hydrogen target matches the 1,500 Nm3 per hour nameplate figure held at steady load.

More than 65% of Cyprus's potential solar output was blocked from the grid in the first five months of 2026, with curtailed volumes reaching about 162 GWh, pv magazine reported.

The share lost has climbed steeply, rising from around 12% in 2022 to 47% in 2025, according to CyprusGrid. Cyprus does not compensate investors for curtailed generation.

The curtailed fleet is mostly photovoltaic, with 12.5 MW of biogas capacity and 24 MW of wind power also tied into the distribution network, CyprusGrid told pv magazine.

Small rooftop systems have taken the heaviest hit. The grid cut a record 46,687 MWh of residential and small-scale solar generation between January and May 2026. Across the whole of last year, that segment lost 30,180 MWh, against just 1,565 MWh the year before. Summer losses were sharper still: from June to August 2025, curtailed volumes more than quadrupled versus the same months in 2024.

Andreas Procopiou, founder of CyprusGrid, attributed the record curtailments to must-run conventional units that hold grid capacity renewables could otherwise use.

A research group at the East China University of Science and Technology has traced how low-silver electrodes in heterojunction (HJT) solar cells degrade, showing that the weak point sits at the contact interface rather than in the bulk conductor line.

The experiment used a silver-coated copper paste combining core-shell particles, submicron silver powder, and an epoxy resin binder, per pv magazine. Those particles measured 2 to 4 μm across, wrapped in a silver shell of roughly 70 nm. The paste went onto n-type monocrystalline silicon wafers by screen printing, then dried at 150 C and cured at 195 C.

During thermal aging, the measurements showed contact resistivity shifting with temperature far more than line resistance did. That gap led the team to name interfacial degradation, not the metal line itself, as the main driver of electrical failure.

Energy-dispersive X-ray spectroscopy, focused ion beam-scanning electron microscopy, and X-ray diffraction pointed the researchers to silver-copper interdiffusion and defect formation at the interface as the primary cause.

Silver-coated copper pastes are one route for trimming silver use per cell in HJT production, and this work locates the reliability problem at the silver-copper boundary where interdiffusion sets in. The results appeared in Solar Energy Materials and Solar Cells in a paper titled "Thermal aging-induced interdiffusion and reliability degradation in low-silver electrodes for SHJ solar cells".

Chinese researchers hit 20.21% efficiency in a pseudo-planar heterojunction (PPHJ) organic solar cell, ranking it among the highest ever recorded for that structure, pv magazine reported.

The team's core move was to slot a highly crystalline polymer, D18, between the donor and acceptor layers as a buffer.

That buffer lifted performance. The resulting PM6/D18/L8-BO device converted power at 19.80%, ahead of the conventional PM6/L8-BO cell at 18.53% and a PM6:D18/L8-BO blend architecture at 19.21%.

The record 20.21% came after the group folded a non-fullerene small-molecule acceptor, BTP-eC9, into the PM6/D18/L8-BO active layer, pre-blending it with L8-BO before deposition.

The work appeared in the Chinese Journal of Polymer Science, with contributions from Jiangxi Normal University, Zhejiang University, the Chinese University of Hong Kong, Changzhou University, and Gannan Normal University.

The UK crossed 2,003,000 solar installations by the end of March 2026, with total capacity at 22.1 GW, according to provisional figures from the Department of Energy Security and Net Zero (DESNZ) cited by pv magazine.

March alone brought 27,607 new solar installations, adding 121 MW of capacity, the busiest single calendar month for installations since 2012. Large-scale projects still hold most of the generating capacity, but rooftop demand drove the installation count higher.

UK solar added 2.3 GW of deployed capacity in the twelve months to March 2026, a 11.7% increase over the period, according to pv magazine.

Utility-scale procurement climbed as well. The Contracts for Difference (CfD) auction round that closed in February 2026 secured a record 4.9 GW of solar across 157 plants.

These figures move the sector toward the government's stated goal of at least 45 GW of solar capacity by 2030. To back distributed deployment, ministers have committed GBP 15 billion (USD 20 billion) to a home energy efficiency program that includes grants and loans for millions of rooftop installations by 2030.

Smaller systems face a rule change too. The government has committed to legalizing plug-in balcony solar devices in time for summer 2026, opening a route for renters and apartment residents to add small photovoltaic units.

In the Amroha district of Uttar Pradesh, HVR Solar will build a 1.2 GW TOPCon solar cell manufacturing facility, pv magazine reported.

The Amroha plant should create more than 500 local jobs, according to the Delhi-based module maker and EPC services provider.

For the project, HVR Solar has signed memorandums of understanding with technology and equipment partners, among them Shenzhen Han's Photovoltaic Equipment Co., Gentech Technology (Huzhou), and IndyGreen Technologies.

The cell factory follows a module line further along in the company's pipeline. HVR Solar plans to commission a 1.2 GW module manufacturing facility in Sonipat, Haryana, in June 2026. That plant occupies a 6.5-acre site near Murthal and will turn out TOPCon and heterojunction (HJT) modules.

The two sites would give HVR Solar matched cell and module capacity of 1.2 GW each.

Liberia has energized its first grid-connected utility-scale solar plant, the 20 MW Mount Coffee Solar Park, built at the site of the existing 88 MW Mount Coffee Hydropower Station in Montserrado district.

Work on the plant started in October 2024, according to pv magazine.

The startup lands alongside new financing for the country's grid-connected renewables. President Boakai signed investment agreements with the World Bank worth USD 125 million, of which USD 57 million is additional funding for the Regional Emergency Solar Power Intervention Project (RESPITE), a World Bank-funded program raising grid-connected renewables capacity across West and Central African nations.

That USD 57 million tranche pays for lifting the solar facility from 20 MW to 30 MW, installing a 12 MWh battery energy storage system (BESS), and upgrading the colocated hydropower station. The Africa Solar Industry Association (AFSIA) said the BESS is due to come online by October 2027.

Siting solar and battery capacity at the hydro plant lets the operator dispatch a combined block of output at one grid node.

Utility-scale solar had been absent from Liberia's generation mix before this plant. AFSIA counts 130.9 MW of operational solar in the country, most of it commercial and industrial projects, according to its project database.

The planned 30 MW solar array plus 12 MWh BESS stays small next to the 88 MW hydropower station it shares a site with. The project sets a precedent for contracting and interconnection under RESPITE.

AFSIA expects the BESS to come online by October 2027, which will show whether the solar expansion delivers firmed output on a grid still anchored by hydro.

Austria adds a 10% subsidy bonus for solar and storage systems built with European value-added components as it opens its second 2026 photovoltaic funding round on June 17, backed by EUR 12 million, according to pv magazine.

The budget splits by system size. Smaller installations up to 10 kW and those from 10 kW to 20 kW draw EUR 2 million each, while larger commercial systems of 20 kW to 100 kW and above 100 kW take EUR 4 million each.

Fixed rates favor the smallest arrays, paying EUR 150/kW below 10 kW and easing to EUR 140/kW between 10 kW and 20 kW.

Inverters carry the clearest sign of the local-content push. The ministry said 46% of PV applications already use European-made inverters, and systems built with European value-added parts qualify for the 10% bonus on the approved subsidy.

Nearly 29,000 applications requesting EUR 135 million swamped the first 2026 call, which started at EUR 40 million before the government pulled another EUR 30 million from remaining funds. Even after the top-up, only slightly more than half won approval, according to pv magazine.

Storage now travels with almost every request. About 90% of first-round applications included a storage component.

A third call follows from October 8 to October 22, carrying EUR 8 million split at EUR 2 million for each of Categories A through D.

University of A Coruña researchers said in a study that Spain's coastline could hold between 4.45 GW and 6.48 GW of floating offshore solar, with the total depending on which maritime spatial planning rules apply. At the top of that band, offshore panels would cover 9% of the electricity Spain used in September 2025; at the bottom, 6.2%.

What sets the work apart is its method: it is the first systematic reading of Spain's offshore solar potential through the country's Maritime Spatial Planning Plans (POEM), the framework approved under Royal Decree 150/2023, and it appears in the Journal of Cleaner Production.

The team built its estimates around the Merganser floating platform from Dutch firm SolarDuck, treating each unit as 0.52 MW of capacity.

Where that capacity lands depends entirely on the planning case chosen. Tie development to the priority offshore wind zones, and the Strait of Gibraltar-Alboran Sea and the Canary Islands together absorb more than 90% of the estimated total. Apply the broader maritime planning restrictions instead, and the Mediterranean carries roughly 2.54 GW on its own, emerging as Spain's leading zone for offshore solar.

Siting panels at sea also lifts output. Seawater cooling can raise electricity generation by up to 10.2% against comparable onshore installations, prior research cited in the study found.