Saturday, 11 July 2026

Researchers at Mälardalen University in Sweden tested how a vertical agrivoltaic system affected oat yield during the 2024 growing season, according to pv magazine. The field trials ran at Kärrbo Prästgård, with oats sown in May 2024 under rainfed conditions.

The vertical setup used 60 bifacial photovoltaic modules arranged in north-south-oriented rows, according to pv magazine. A ground-mounted comparison system held 32 bifacial modules in two rows.

Corresponding author Arash Khosravi said oat development through the season, measured by leaf area index, was greater under the vertical system than under ground-mounted conditions. Even after accounting for the 10% land loss tied to the PV panel structure, the agrivoltaic system produced more total oat biomass than the open field in one year, according to Khosravi.

In the other year, the agrivoltaic treatment produced 106 kg/hectare less biomass than the open-field treatment, according to pv magazine. No statistically significant differences in crude protein and crude fat were observed between the two treatments.

The findings were published in Data in Brief in a paper titled "Data on the effect of vertical agrivoltaic systems on the crop performance of oat (Avena Sativa L.) cultivated in Sweden".

RWE and PPC have finalized three large-scale solar clusters in northern Greece with a combined capacity of 930 MW, according to pv magazine. The solar farms sit within the boundaries of the former Amynteo open-cast lignite mine in western Macedonia, northern Greece.

Each farm was developed, constructed and commissioned by joint venture Meton Energy, in which RWE holds a 51% share and PPC holds a 49% share, pv magazine reported. Sopna Sury, CEO of RWE Renewables Europe & Australia, said the sites can generate enough electricity to power 400,000 Greek households.

The joint venture has more capacity in the pipeline. The Kotyli and Neo Syrakio solar farms will carry a total capacity of 567 MW and are scheduled for commissioning in 2027, according to pv magazine.

The projects add to a wider push to build solar on former lignite land. In April, PPC announced it had finished constructing a 2.13 GW solar portfolio in northern Greece across sites on former lignite mines around Amyntaio and Ptolemaida, pv magazine reported.

Greece's solar base has expanded sharply. According to IRENA, the country's cumulative solar capacity rose from 8.82 GW at the end of 2024 to 11.5 GW by the end of 2025, an addition of over 2.2 GW during the year.

Arevon's Eland solar-plus-storage project in Kern County, California, ties 758 MW of solar to a battery system rated at 300 MW and 1,200 MWh, according to Power Magazine. At full output it supplies roughly 7% of the electricity used in Los Angeles.

The site spans 4,600 acres and carries 1.36 million solar panels, with storage housed in 172 Tesla Megapack enclosures, Power Magazine reported. Capital spending on the project passed USD 2 billion.

Developers split construction across two stages. Eland 1 entered commercial operation in December 2024, followed by Eland 2 in August 2025, according to Power Magazine.

A 25-year power purchase agreement covers the output, signed with Southern California Public Power Authority (SCPPA) members that include the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power (LADWP) and Glendale Water and Power (GWP).

Mayor Karen Bass said the project will serve more than 266,000 homes in Los Angeles and contribute to the city's clean energy share, which exceeds 60%, within a target of 100% clean energy by 2035.

Over its first eight months, Eland 1 logged more than 1,550 hours of critical peak-time operation and delivered power for more than 1,450 hours after dark, Arevon reported to Power Magazine. Its battery was called on more than 350 times in under a year during the priciest, highest-demand periods.

The 2.6-GW Coastal Virginia Offshore Wind (CVOW) project has cleared the full U.S. permitting stack, according to Power Magazine.

Power Magazine reported that Dominion Energy secured a federal lease off Virginia Beach a decade before the project completed that permitting process.

The project also survived a federal stop-work order, according to Power Magazine.

Researchers from Helmholtz-Zentrum Berlin (HZB) and Humboldt-Universität achieved a 25.5% power conversion efficiency for a perovskite-CIGS tandem solar cell, according to pv magazine. The result was confirmed by the European Solar Test Installation (ESTI), pv magazine reported.

The cell pairs a top perovskite device with a bottom cell based on copper, indium, gallium and selenium (CIGS). According to pv magazine, the previous record of 25.17% was set by Tokyo City University in Japan in mid-May and verified by Japan's National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology (AIST).

The German team explored CIGS-based bottom cells with band gaps of 1.05 eV and 1.1 eV, pv magazine reported. The scientists also fabricated a 2.25 cm² module that reached an efficiency of approximately 19.7%.

HZB researcher Farias Basulto told pv magazine that in-house testing of similar designs has already achieved efficiencies of up to 27.5%. "The physics underlying our current cell architecture indicates that 25.5% is only an initial milestone," Basulto said, according to pv magazine.

Iberdrola and BP have wrapped up construction of a 25 MW green hydrogen plant at BP's Castellon refinery in Spain, pv magazine reported. The two built it through a joint venture called Castellon Green Hydrogen.

Once running, the plant should turn out roughly 2,800 tonnes of green hydrogen a year, according to pv magazine, replacing some of the grey hydrogen the refinery now consumes.

Five containerized proton exchange membrane (PEM) electrolyser modules of 5 MW each make up the installation, supplied by Plug Power, pv magazine reported.

Investment in the scheme tops EUR 70 million, according to pv magazine, with EUR 15 million secured under Spain's Recovery, Transformation and Resilience Plan.

Spain's Ministry for Ecological Transition, acting through the Institute for Energy Diversification and Saving (IDAE), signed off on shifting up to EUR 211 million in IPCEI Hy2Use funding to the Castellon project, pv magazine reported.

The partners expect output to begin before the end of this year, and they say the site will rank as the largest operational green hydrogen facility in Spain by 2026, according to pv magazine.

A technical review by DNV of the BRIZO floating solar system built by Fred. Olsen 1848 has concluded with a Statement of Compliance, according to Offshore Engineer OEDigital.

BRIZO uses a flexible rope-mesh and tensioning system that lets it run in inland, coastal and near-shore sites facing more exposed wave conditions than conventional floating solar, Offshore Engineer OEDigital reported.

Geir Grimsrud, Chief Technical Officer at Fred. Olsen 1848, said the Statement of Compliance marks a milestone for BRIZO and advances the bankability of the solution.

Grimsrud said the document verifies the technical approach and its suitability for more demanding conditions.

Prajeev Rasiah, Senior Vice President and Regional Director for Northern Europe, Energy Systems at DNV, said floating solar was entering a new phase of maturity in which the industry had to move beyond sheltered waters to reach meaningful scale.

Scotland's cumulative solar capacity reached 0.9 GW by the end of Q1 2026, according to an update posted by the Scottish government and reported by pv magazine.

Total renewables capacity across Scotland stood at 18.1 GW at the end of Q1 2026, according to pv magazine, up 3.2% from the 17.6 GW registered at the end of Q1 2025.

The country's renewables fleet generated 13.4 TWh of electricity in Q1 2026, according to pv magazine, the highest figure recorded in a single quarter and a 22% increase on Q1 2025.

Scotland's solar pipeline stands at 3.4 GW, according to figures released by the Scottish government. Of that total, 0.2 GW is under construction, 1.7 GW is awaiting construction and applications have been submitted for the remaining 1.5 GW.

On storage, Scotland had 24 operational electricity storage projects with an estimated capacity of 1,583 MW by the end of Q1 2026, according to pv magazine. That total includes 22 battery projects at 843 MW and two pumped hydro projects at 740 MW.

The battery storage pipeline is larger still. According to pv magazine, 3 GW of battery projects are under construction, a further 19.1 GW await construction and 10.7 GW sit in the early stages of planning.

Across the wider United Kingdom, total solar capacity reached 22.3 GW by the end of April 2026, according to pv magazine, with more than two million solar installations registered across England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland.

Cambridge researchers have scaled a solar-driven photoreforming reactor to a one-square-metre panel that converts plastic waste and water into hydrogen fuel under sunlight, according to Hydrogen Fuel News.

The design marks a jump in size from the group's earliest work. Hydrogen Fuel News reported that Professor Erwin Reisner and his group first explored photoreforming using 25 cm2 devices in laboratory glassware under controlled light.

The panel is built through spray-coating. According to co-first author Ariffin Bin Mohamad Annuar, the formulation contains light-absorbing semiconductor particles mixed with molecular precursors of cobalt and zirconium.

Malaysia's energy firm Petronas has joined the project as an industrial partner, Hydrogen Fuel News reported, reflecting interest in coupling waste management with hydrogen fuel generation.

The work has drawn public backing. According to Hydrogen Fuel News, the project has received support from the UK Department for Science, Innovation and Technology and the Royal Academy of Engineering, and Cambridge Enterprise has filed patents.

India has opened a nuclear-powered hydrogen production facility at the Indira Gandhi Centre for Atomic Research in Kalpakkam, Tamil Nadu, according to World Nuclear News. Ajit Kumar Mohanty, Secretary and Chairman of India's Atomic Energy Commission, inaugurated the plant.

Heat from the Fast Breeder Test Reactor feeds the process, which splits hydrogen using a copper-chlorine thermochemical method built by Indian researchers, World Nuclear News reported.

That reactor, cooled by sodium, first went critical at the centre in 1985. Its output climbed to 32 MWt in 2018 and hit its nameplate rating of 40 MWt in 2022.

Work is under way on a 5 MWt high temperature gas cooled reactor that engineers say could pair with thermochemical hydrogen production. A lead unit is proposed for the Bhabha Atomic Research Centre's Vizag R&D campus in Andhra Pradesh.

The International Energy Agency puts global hydrogen output at 97 million tonnes in 2023, of which less than 1% came from low-emissions sources. In its 2024 review of hydrogen production, the agency said low-emission volumes could reach 49 million tonnes per year by 2030.

Hydrogen demand is usually discussed as if the world is about to discover a giant new fuel market, according to CleanTechnica, which calls that the wrong starting point.

Hydrogen is already a very large industrial molecule, CleanTechnica said, but most of that demand is tied to the fossil-fuel system, fertilizer, methanol and process chemistry.

Iberdrola's 243 MW Fénix solar farm in Sicily is now Italy's largest, generating enough clean electricity each year to power the equivalent of more than 140,000 homes, according to Electrek.

Electrek reported that the plant is expected to produce nearly 400,000 MWh of electricity annually.

The facility overtakes Italy's previous largest solar farm, a 170 MW installation in Viterbo in the Lazio region on Italy's west coast, according to Electrek.

Fénix is built from more than 413,000 bifacial solar panels that capture sunlight from both sides to raise output, Electrek reported.

The project connects to the grid through 26 km of medium-voltage lines and another 9 km of high-voltage transmission lines, according to Electrek.

Electrek reported that the European Investment Bank financed the project.

Italy now has more than 40 GW of installed solar capacity and aims to roughly double that by 2030 under its national energy and climate plan, according to Electrek.

FuelCell Energy secured about USD 49 million in financing to export its carbonate fuel cell systems to South Korea, according to Hydrogen Fuel News.

The funding comes from the Export-Import Bank of the United States (EXIM), Hydrogen Fuel News reported. The financing backs the export of the company's carbonate fuel cell technology to South Korea.

Renewable energy sources covered 57.7% of Germany's gross electricity consumption in the first half of 2026, a new record, according to pv magazine.

The share rose from 55.2% in H1 2025 and edged past the previous record of 57.4% set in H1 2024, pv magazine reported.

Gross electricity consumption reached 262.4 TWh in the first half of 2026, up from 260.9 TWh in the same period a year earlier, according to pv magazine.

Onshore wind supplied the largest share of generation at 20.1%, followed by solar at 19.9%, biomass at 8.3%, offshore wind at 5.7%, and hydropower at 2.7%, pv magazine reported.

Germany added 8.3 GW of solar PV capacity during the period, up from 7.8 GW in the first half of 2025, according to pv magazine.

Kerstin Andreae of BDEW warned that no draft bills yet exist for amendments to Germany's EEG and Offshore Wind Energy Act, which must be adopted by year-end and approved by the EU. "The first six months are over and there aren't even any draft bills yet," she said, as quoted by pv magazine.

French fastening and assembly provider Araymond showed Neluma, a modular floating solar design that builds its float parts on-site through containerized microfactories, at the Smarter E trade show in Munich, which ran June 24 to 26, according to pv magazine.

Each microfactory sits inside a shipping container and shapes aluminum coils into tubes measuring six meters long and 40 centimeters across, which then act as the platform floats, pv magazine reported.

A crew of 10 can put together roughly 1 MW of floating capacity in a week, which works out to about 500 labor hours per megawatt, according to Araymond, as reported by pv magazine.

The design holds up in continuous winds reaching 160 km/h and gusts to 220 km/h, and needs about a third fewer anchors than conventional layouts, Araymond claims, per pv magazine.

Across onshore projects, Araymond says it has helped install more than 22 GW of solar capacity globally.

The company traces its floating work to a first industrial demonstrator built in 2024 at Montmélian in Savoie, France, and now counts eight installations worldwide, pv magazine reported. One of those sits on a reservoir at the Jindal Power thermal plant in Dhule, India, where a 57 kW pilot went up in roughly 10 days, according to pv magazine.