Saturday, 4 July 2026

KIER researchers have built a shingled photovoltaic module to pair with thermoelectric generators (TEGs), converting waste heat into electricity through the Seebeck effect, according to pv magazine.

The module started from Passivated Emitter and Rear Cell (PERC) cells supplied by South Korea's Shinsung Engineering. The team cut those cells into narrow strips with a 1,064 nm infrared laser, then finished the separation by mechanical cleaving.

Build variants ran from three strips up to seven, each holding a 100 cm² active area, with a larger 14-strip version stretching to 170 cm². Adjacent strips were joined in series with CA 3556HF conductive adhesive, then hot-pressed and cured at 180 C for one minute.

On the thermal side, the team assembled a 100 cm² substrate-free TEG array from 308 thermoelectric elements supplied by Chinese specialist Xinrong, using polymer-filled gaps for mechanical stability and heat transfer.

The series-connected strips raise operating voltage and cut output current, which trims current-dependent resistive losses and Joule heating inside the TEG.

A drone strike inflicted significant structural damage on a building at the new central used fuel storage facility inside the Chernobyl exclusion zone, International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) Director General Rafael Mariano Grossi said.

Grossi said the hit tore into part of the fuel reception building, which houses the IAEA safeguards office. Casks holding spent fuel sit just a few hundred metres away, and radiation readings across the site stayed normal, with no radioactive contamination detected.

Energoatom put the resulting fire at 40 square metres. The operator said crews localised and completely extinguished it, and that no personnel were hurt.

The Centralised Spent Nuclear Fuel Storage Facility was built to hold 16,530 used fuel assemblies at full capacity, split between 12,010 VVER-1000 assemblies and 4,520 VVER-440 assemblies. Contracts with USA-based Holtec International were signed in 2005, though work on site did not start until 2017.

The strike came as another nuclear site faced power problems. The Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant lost offsite power for the 18th time since the war began. That outage ran 15 hours, one of its longest, forcing operators to run emergency diesel generators to cool the six shut down reactors until offsite power came back on Saturday morning.

Constellation won a US Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) waiver on June 1 permitting it to shift 760 MW of capacity interconnection rights to the former Three Mile Island unit 1, the reactor slated to restart in 2027.

The rights are being moved from Eddystone, a six-unit dual-fuelled plant in Pennsylvania, under a waiver request Constellation lodged with FERC on March 31.

Eddystone 3 and 4, each rated 380 MW, were set to shut last year. Emergency orders from US Energy Secretary Chris Wright have kept the pair running past their retirement date to hold up grid reliability.

A draft environmental assessment and a draft finding of no significant impact went out for public comment from the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) on June 8, covering the proposed reauthorisation of power operations at the plant. That comment window stays open for 30 days and closes on July 8.

When the reactor shut in 2019, its renewed operating licence still ran until 2034. Constellation has asked the NRC to grant an exemption request and three licence amendment requests to allow power operations up to that expiry, and has said it will seek to extend running to 2054.

Orano has begun construction at its Zuuvch Ovoo uranium project in Mongolia, with a ceremony at the site marking the shift into the build phase. The mine is designed for a nominal output of about 2,500 tU per year across an estimated 30-year lifespan.

Construction is planned to run four years, using in-situ leach methods that dissolve uranium underground and pump the solution to the surface. The project is expected to create 1,600 direct and indirect jobs.

The investment agreement assigns more than 51% of the project's direct benefits to the Mongolian state. Orano and the Government of Mongolia signed that agreement in January 2025 to develop and operate the mine in the south-eastern Dornogovi province.

Mongolia held 144,600 tU of uranium resources as of 2023, ranking tenth worldwide, according to the World Nuclear Association. No uranium has been mined in the country since the mid-1990s, when work stopped at the Dornod mine.

Pennsylvania's General Fund deficit was estimated to rise to $3.9 billion in FY2025-26 before climbing to $6.7 billion in FY2026-27, according to the Independent Fiscal Office (IFO) February 2026 Budget Brief cited by IEEFA.

The IFO also estimated that the state's Rainy-Day Fund surplus will drop from $7.8 billion in FY2025-26 to $1.4 billion by the end of FY2026-27.

IEEFA reports that tax credits to Pennsylvania's fossil fuel industry are 26 times the size of effective tax rates on the industry.

Unlike most oil and gas-producing states, Pennsylvania has no severance tax on natural gas production, according to IEEFA. As a share of total state taxes, the state's impact fees, levied primarily on horizontally drilled natural gas wells, are 0.3% of state tax revenues.

"Neither job growth nor tax revenue growth is on the radar for the fossil fuel industry," said Trey Cowan, energy finance analyst at IEEFA.

A long-term power supply deal between a solar park and steelmaker Stahlwerk Thüringen GmbH (SWT) would clear on marginal cost between EUR 20/MWh and EUR 70/MWh, depending on the assumptions used, Fraunhofer IOSB-AST found in a viability study reported by pv magazine.

The steel plant runs an awkward load for solar matching. Its demand can swing by as much as 60 MW inside a few minutes, which means one 15-minute settlement interval can capture the plant both drawing power and feeding into the grid. That whipsaw is what makes lining up photovoltaic output against furnace demand hard inside standard trading windows.

Where the final strike price landed for SWT stayed private. The institute kept that number out of the study, according to pv magazine.

Negative wholesale prices are the sharpest exposure the steelmaker would carry, the analysis concluded. When prices dip below zero, the contracted solar volumes lose value, a hit that bites hardest during bright hours when the plant may itself be exporting.

A power purchase agreement (PPA) running 15 years or more locks in procurement costs and cushions an industrial buyer against short-run swings, IOSB-AST said. A contract of that length maps onto SWT's plan to reach climate-neutral steel production by 2040 and lift the renewable share of its energy use.

Neither side is bound to sign. The study scoped the terms a PPA would need to cover, from price and volume shape to how the two parties would split the cost of negative-price hours, according to pv magazine.

Wholesale power prices in Spain turned negative for 397 hours in the first quarter, up from 48 hours a year earlier and closing in on the 555 hours recorded across the whole of 2025, according to pv magazine.

The sharpest single stretch hit -EUR 58.60/MWh over the 12:00 to 12:45 CET window on February 21, with solar output at 15.6 GW against demand of 24.6 GW, according to pv magazine.

José Donoso, director general of the Spanish PV association UNEF, said the market is out of step with the current generation mix. "We have a pricing system that is ill-suited to a scenario of high renewable penetration and low demand," Donoso told pv magazine.

Granted demand connection capacity stands near 43 GW, while average system demand sits close to 35 GW, according to pv magazine. UNEF puts the timeline for new electricity-intensive demand to fully materialize at three to five years.

Generators also carry a fixed tax load. The IVPEE, set at 7% of electricity generation revenue, dates to 2013 and was designed to chip away at the power system's accumulated tariff deficit, according to pv magazine.

The February 21 episode shows the pressure on midday output: solar of 15.6 GW fed into demand that reached only 24.6 GW, pushing prices below zero, according to pv magazine. Donoso ties the recurring negative hours to a pricing framework that does not fit high renewable supply and thin demand, a mismatch UNEF expects to persist until new load arrives over its three-to-five-year window.

Debt deals, not equity, drove global solar corporate funding up 131% year-over-year to open the first quarter of 2026, according to Mercom Capital Group.

Across 53 deals, solar raised USD 11.1 billion in Q1 2026, more than double the USD 4.8 billion secured over 39 deals a year earlier.

Lenders wrote most of that increase. Announced solar debt financing hit USD 8.9 billion over 28 deals, a 154% rise from the year-ago quarter.

Public markets swung back into play, with solar issuers raising USD 1.1 billion across eight deals against just USD 20 million in two deals a year earlier, Mercom reported.

Early-stage equity thinned even as debt swelled. Venture capital funding for solar fell 21% to USD 1.1 billion across 17 deals, down from USD 1.4 billion over 14 deals in the prior-year period.

Inox Clean Energy led the venture rounds at USD 343 million, followed by USD 165 million for Clean Max Enviro Energy Solutions and USD 150 million for Amarenco.

Project sales climbed too. Buyers and sellers moved 18.4 GW of solar assets during the quarter, up from 13.6 GW a year earlier, according to pv magazine citing Mercom.

Monterey Park voters backed a citywide ban on new data centers on June 2, with the measure winning 86.4% support against 13.6% opposition in county election results. The tally made Monterey Park the first US city to bar data centers citywide through a voter-approved ballot measure.

The measure targeted a plan to convert a commercial office building on Saturn Street into a data center of nearly 50 megawatts, sized for AI computing demand. Digico Infrastructure REIT and HMC Capital's StratCap, the backers of that project, had pulled their planning application on April 3 as local opposition mounted and regulatory questions grew.

The Monterey Park City Council had already passed an ordinance on April 20 that barred all data centers inside the city. The June vote, cast on Measure NDC, put the prohibition to residents directly.

"This week our city has been celebrating the landslide results from Measure NDC," Mayor Elizabeth Yang said in a phone interview.

Digico is separately selling its Chicago data center for USD 750 million, using the proceeds to cut debt and fund a site in Sydney, according to Climate Home News.

What sets the Monterey Park result apart is the route: residents locked in the ban by direct ballot rather than through a council vote alone. That distinguishes it from the April council ordinance, which took effect without a public vote.

The ballot outcome kept the Saturn Street site closed to data center use even after its backers had withdrawn in April. Residents pressed ahead with Measure NDC to block any future proposal there or elsewhere in the city.

Turkey's Akkuyu Nuclear Power Plant has loaded 163 dummy fuel assemblies into its first unit, part of the commissioning process before live fuel enters the core. Turkey's Nuclear Regulatory Authority oversaw the loading of the fuel dummies.

Sergei Butckikh, chief executive of Akkuyu Nuclear, described the completed loading at Unit 1 as "a full rehearsal" for loading nuclear fuel.

Unit 1 is targeted to begin supplying Turkey's energy system during 2026. Nuclear fuel arrived at the site in April 2023.

Rosatom is building four VVER-1200 reactors at Akkuyu under a build-own-operate model. When completed, the 4,800 MWe plant is expected to meet about 10% of Turkey's electricity needs.

Beyond the four reactors, Turkey is developing plans for small modular reactors, aiming to add 5 GWe of capacity by 2050.

Rept Battero showed a sodium-ion storage cell rated at 320 Ah, the Wending, during SNEC 2026 in Shanghai, aiming it at utility-scale, long-duration projects and sites that run in extreme climates.

Specifications the maker disclosed put cycle life above 20,000 cycles, round-trip efficiency at 97% or better, and the operating window between -50 C and 60 C, alongside the 320 Ah rating. A service life of 25 to 30 years would match the useful life many utility-scale storage assets are built to reach, the company said.

Discharge holds down to -50 C with more than 87% of capacity retained, Rept Battero stated. In overcharge and nail-penetration tests, the cell showed no fire, explosion, or thermal runaway, according to the company.

The primary market is large-scale storage running discharge durations of four hours or more, Rept Battero said. Mass production and commercial deliveries are set to start in 2027.

Chinese cell makers have pushed sodium-ion chemistry as a rival to lithium iron phosphate in stationary storage, where cell weight counts for less and cold-weather output and feedstock cost weigh heavier. The cold-climate rating down to -50 C is the feature Rept Battero leans on to separate the Wending from that field, with the four-hour-plus duration target defining where it expects to compete. Delivery rests on the 2027 production start and on outside checks of the cycle-life and efficiency numbers the maker has put forward.

Korean developers have opened negotiations with the Zambian government on a 500 MW solar plant, pv magazine reported. The proposal envisions ten separate 50 MW units brought online in sequence.

Zambia's national utility ZESCO would sign a long-term power purchase agreement to buy the plant's output. That offtake contract is what makes the financing work: without a firm long-term buyer, a plant this size struggles to reach bankability in a market strained by hydro-driven shortages, and it underpins the proposed USD 700 million to USD 900 million outlay.

At 500 MW, the plant is forecast to cover about a third of Zambia's current energy deficit once running, according to pv magazine.

Zambia's energy ministry said the Korean side arrived with a structured proposal valued between USD 700 million and USD 900 million. The ministry named the Export-Import Bank of Korea and the Korea Development Bank as possible financing partners.

Zambia already has 1.15 GW of operational solar tracked by the Africa Solar Industry Association, with another 1.64 GW under construction. Against that operational base, a single 500 MW addition would lift installed solar by nearly half.

TotalEnergies doubled its oil trading profit to roughly USD 1 billion in the first quarter after building crude positions ahead of the Iran war, Chief Executive Patrick Pouyanné told lawmakers, according to Rigzone.

The trading desk booked about USD 500 million above its usual quarterly haul of half a billion dollars, Pouyanné said at a parliamentary hearing in Paris on Wednesday. "This quarter, rather than making 500 million, they made 500 million more," he said.

Pouyanné traced the gain to timing. Buyers at the trading arm added barrels as the US Navy massed ships near the Strait of Hormuz in February, then routed crude out of the Persian Gulf through the Fujairah hub past the chokepoint once fighting began.

First-quarter net earnings climbed almost 30%, driven mostly by war-linked gains, with the jump in energy prices drawing public anger in France as households and businesses paid more, Pouyanné said.

A price cap the company applied at its French service stations has cost it about EUR 200 million, or USD 232 million, to date, Pouyanné told the hearing.

He said second-quarter profit will likely top the first as the crisis drags on.

Iraq will sign a formal deal on Friday to reopen the Strait of Hormuz and lift crude shipments from its southern ports.

Salim Al-Rikabi, spokesman for the Iraqi oil ministry, said exports will resume "as soon as maritime navigation returns to normal," and that the country is moving to that point.

Shipments through Hormuz reached 1 million barrels a day in the first half of this month, against observed exports of about 98,000 barrels a day in May from the southern ports, drawing on figures from Iraq's State Organization for Marketing of Oil and tanker tracking data compiled by Bloomberg. In the year through February, total Iraqi shipments averaged 3.5 million barrels a day.

The International Energy Agency said Wednesday it expects the export recovery to be "gradual".

Brent fell below USD 80 a barrel earlier this week as more Iraqi crude looked set to reach the market, dropping to levels last seen in early March.

Iraq's southern terminals carry the bulk of its seaborne crude out through Hormuz, so a shutdown of the waterway strips out most of that flow, and the Friday accord is the step needed to restart it.

Invenergy will bankroll a next-generation geothermal push with a refund from the Trump administration granted for abandoning offshore wind projects.

The Chicago-based developer struck the agreement with the Trump administration on Wednesday, Canary Media first reported. The company is exiting offshore wind work in exchange for the refund and redirecting the proceeds into geothermal development.

Canary Media described the refund as controversial. Invenergy has framed the shift as joining the U.S. effort to build next-generation geothermal projects.

Invenergy has not publicly disclosed project sites, capacity targets, or a timeline for the geothermal work.

A USD 116 billion paper gain landed for Elon Musk after he exercised his full 2018 Tesla CEO pay package and picked up 303,960,630 shares, an SEC filing shows, as first reported by Electrek.

The options carried a split-adjusted strike of USD 23.34. With Tesla closing at USD 404.66 on the exercise day, each share opened a spread of USD 381.32 between what Musk paid and what the stock was worth.

Musk covered the exercise bill through net settlement instead of cash. Tesla held back 17,531,857 shares, valued near USD 7.1 billion at the closing price, to settle the cost. The move left him holding 286,428,773 net new shares, all restricted and locked until they vest on January 19, 2028 under a service-based condition.

Tesla lodged a Form 4 and a Schedule 13G amendment with the SEC on June 17, each logging the transaction as June 16, 2026. Behind the exercise sat an Implementation Agreement the board signed on April 21, 2026. Musk filed his exercise notice on June 9, which started a five-business-day clock that ran out on June 16.

Delaware Chancellor Kathaleen McCormick had struck down the 2018 award in 2024, finding the board conflicted and shareholders misled. That ruling did not hold: the Delaware Supreme Court overturned it in December 2025, judging full rescission too severe.

This award stands apart from the USD 1 trillion 2025 pay grant that shareholders backed in November, a package that vests in tranches stretching to 2035.

Musk paid more than USD 11 billion in taxes when he cashed in his separate 2012 award in 2021, a far smaller event than this one.

Jim Zeigler, 78, won the Republican primary for an Alabama Public Service Commission seat, defeating incumbent Chris Beeker, according to Inside Climate News. Beeker had held a 5 to 1 campaign finance advantage going into the race.

Zeigler is returning to a body he once knew. He held a commission seat for a single term running from 1975 to 1979. Republicans have held the panel without interruption for years, and the last Democrat elected to it took a seat in 2008.

The primary comes during a structural overhaul of Alabama's utility regulator. The Alabama Legislature passed a law this year that grows the commission from three seats to seven and creates a secretary of energy to hold consolidated regulatory power.

In November, Zeigler will face Democrat Sheila McNeil.

The campaign ran with little public information available on large-load growth in the state. Both Alabama Power and the Alabama Public Service Commission turned down requests from Inside Climate News for a list of data centers operating, proposed, or under construction in Alabama.

How costs tied to those large new loads get allocated will run through the reshaped commission and the new secretary of energy. The seven-seat body will fill out over successive election cycles, with the November contest the next vote to settle.