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 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.

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.

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.

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.