solar

Waymo’s ambitious plan to turn its batteries into gigantic solar powerbanks

by

The electric car industry has been grappling with an elephant in the room for years: what to do with the millions of battery packs that, while no longer useful to power a vehicle, still retain enormous energy capacity. Now, the answer could come with autonomous driving. Waymo has formalized a strategic agreement with the company B2U Storage Solutions to give a “second life” to the spent batteries of their robotaxis, preventing them from ending up directly in recycling plants to convert them into gigantic solar energy storage systems. The paradox of the robotaxi. To understand why this movement is so relevant, you have to understand how an autonomous car ages. As detailed Wall Street Journalthe life of a robotaxi is nothing like that of a private car. While our personal vehicles spend most of the day parked, Waymo vehicles operate as high-use shared assets. In statements to the financial newspaper, Adam Lenz, director of sustainability at Waymo, explained that this high utilization causes its cars to accumulate kilometers at a dizzying rate, forcing the batteries to be removed from commercial service much earlier than usual. According to data from Geotaba consumer electric car loses just 2.3% of battery capacity per year, retaining more than 81% after eight years of use. Robotaxis, however, suffer much more rapid degradation. But just because a battery no longer offers the range needed to safely carry passengers doesn’t mean it’s dead. The new business model seeks to squeeze the residual value of these batteries to use them in stationary applications, avoiding waste and taking advantage of critical materials that have already been manufactured. “Energy sponges.” When Waymo vehicles can no longer perform, B2U removes the batteries, tests their performance, and packages them in large metal cabinets about 2.7 meters high, similar to small shipping containers. Each of these containers houses dozens of units. From there, they function as true “energy sponges” for the electrical grid. During the day, when there is plenty of sun or wind and prices are low, the system absorbs and stores that electricity. It then injects that energy back into the grid during nighttime demand peaks, just when solar production drops. The economic and energy impact is notable. Freeman Hall, CEO of B2U, details that each reused battery can add between $8,000 and $10,000 in electrical value. Additionally, a single storage container has enough capacity to supply an average home for up to three months. Although Waymo has not specified an exact number of units, the goal in the long term it is to deploy “hundreds of megawatt-hours” of capacity, concentrating initial efforts in California and Texas, two states with great dependence and growth in renewable energy. The figures of an unstoppable fleet. As detailed Ars TechnicaWaymo currently operates about 4,000 vehicles, mainly consisting of Jaguar I-Pace with 90 kWh batteries, to which are being added the new “Ojai” models from the Chinese manufacturer Zeekr, equipped with 93 kWh batteries. This fleet makes about 500,000 trips a week, a rate that will only grow: the Wall Street Journal cites Morgan Stanley estimate which predicts that autonomous journeys in the US will go from 15 million in 2025 to 36 million at the end of this year. However, Waymo’s purely “green” narrative has its chiaroscuros, and the specialized press does not ignore them. Ars Technica Enter critical and necessary information: Although the company assures that its electric fleet avoids 530 tons of CO2 every half a million trips, its recent landing in Austin (Texas) together with Uber raised blisters. There, they used mobile generators from the company L-Charge powered by natural gas to recharge the robotaxis, which generated neighborhood complaints about noise and highlighted the logistical difficulties of operating electric vehicles without adequate charging infrastructure. On the other hand, companies like Redwood Materials (backed by Waymo’s own parent company, Alphabet) are also launching their own second-life storage divisions. All this occurs in a context of absolute record: in the first quarter of 2026, the US installed 9.7 GWh of stationary storage, an increase of 32% year-on-year. Beyond the green posturing. In short, this agreement seals a perfect urban circularity. As Adam Lenz reflectsthe same batteries that today transport passengers through their streets, tomorrow will be supporting the local electrical networks of those same communities. However, behind the obvious environmental benefit is a movement of pure business strategy: this is not just green philanthropy. Waymo depends on the electrical grids of the cities where it operates to be stable and robust to be able to keep its fleets operational 24/7. In the age of mass automation, shoring up the electrical grid with batteries from your own retired cars is no longer just an ecological medal; It is a strict necessity of business survival. Image | Daniel Ramirez Xataka | A man ordered a Waymo to go to the airport. When he got there he ran into a problem: the trunk wouldn’t open.

We fill the field with solar panels to stop climate change. We have unintentionally saved 122 species of bees

by

There’s a hum under Minnesota solar panels that engineers didn’t put in the plans. It is a biological, dense, ancient hum. Beneath the photovoltaic panels that convert sunlight into electricity, 122 species of native bees have found something that has been disappearing from the fields of half the world for decades: flowers. It’s not a coincidence. It is the result of a management decision that costs money, requires planning and that, according to the latest science, is producing results that no one expected when the first solar panel was installed in a meadow. The bees are disappearing. A study published in Nature Ecology & Evolutionwith data from 681 agricultural fields on three continents and more than 19,500 specimens of 910 species of wild bees, reached an uncomfortable conclusion: pesticides and habitat loss are reducing bee populations in an additive, independent way, without one factor compensating for the other. That is, having more natural habitat around a field does not neutralize the damage from pesticides. And reducing pesticides is not enough if the habitat has disappeared. They are two different problems that require two different solutions. The work, led by Anina Knauer and researchers from Agroscope among other institutions, found that pesticides not only reduce the number of bees: they also reduce their functional and phylogenetic diversity. Communities not only become smaller, they become simpler, less resilient, less able to cope with future shocks. A desert with seasonal flowers. In Iowa, in the heart of the American Corn Belt, 72% of the territory is covered in corn and soybean monocultures. Less than 0.01% of the original prairie remains standing. This is what researchers at Iowa State University publish in BioScience described as “an extreme example of landscape simplification”. Bees literally have very little to go to. And when the soybeans stop flowering at the end of summer, there is nothing. The colonies enter what science calls the feast-famine dynamic: the festival of flowering followed by famine that kills hives before winter. This is the background scenario. An agricultural world that urgently needs more pollinator habitat, free of pesticides or with minimal exposure. And in that desert, solar panels are doing something no one expected. 14 floors. 122 species. And an unexpected star. A team of researchers led by Bethanne Bruninga-Socolar of Western EcoSystems Technology and James McCall of the National Renewable Energy Laboratory asked a very specific question: Of all the plants that can be grown under and around solar panels, which ones actually establish? And how many bees can they hold? The work, published in Environmental Research Communicationstested 101 plant species in eight different seed mixtures at three solar farms in the tallgrass prairie region of Minnesota. After three years of monitoring, 14 species of flowering herbaceous plants had successfully established themselves. With those 14 species as a starting point, the researchers cross-referenced the data with an exhaustive catalog of plant-bee interactions from the same region. The result is that those 14 plants can support 122 unique species of native bees, 24% of all bee diversity in the state of Minnesota, which has 508 documented species. The star of the system is Zizia aureathe golden Alexander, a yellow flowering plant that blooms early in the season. Alone, it supports 67 species of bees. And 36 of those species—30% of the total study—only visited Zizia aurea among all the plants studied. If it is not in the seed mix of the solar park, those 36 species have nothing. Not all flowers are worth the same. The study also documents an important nuance: bumblebees, the group of pollinators with the most species in decline—three of the eleven species of Bombus of the study are classified as vulnerable by the IUCN: B. pensylvanicus, B. terrestrial and B. fervidus—they don’t get along with Zizia aurea. Only one species of bumblebee visited that plant. Bumblebees prefer Monarda fistulosathe wild bergamot, visited by nine of the eleven species of Bombus of the study. The practical lesson: there is no universal mix. The design of what is planted must respond to what is to be conserved. And what if there are pesticides in the surrounding fields? He study by Toth and colleagues in BioSciencewith more than a decade of data on strips of native prairie embedded in corn and soybean fields in Iowa, systematically reviewed chemical contamination in that type of habitat. Pesticides arrive—neonicotinoids, pyrethroids, fungicides—but in concentrations that, for the best studied species, are below the damage thresholds. And most importantly: the concentrations are no higher than in the rest of the surrounding agricultural landscape. They are not an ecological trap; They are an island of resources in a sea of ​​fields that already have pesticides on them anyway. In addition, a diet rich in quality pollen—exactly what these plants provide—makes bees better tolerate chemical exposure. Nutrition acts as a shield. The authors of that work themselves explicitly point out that their conclusions are applicable to “other types of landscape improvements for pollinators such as hedgerows, pollinator gardens, solar installations with pollinator habitat.” It is not a journalistic extrapolation. It’s in the text of the paper. If there are flowers inside there are bumblebees. If field studies answer the “does it work now?” published in Global Change Biology by Hollie Blaydes and colleagues at Lancaster University answers “will it still work in 2050?” The team modeled the 1,042 operational solar farms in Britain under three socio-economic scenarios for mid-century: a sustainability scenario, an intermediate scenario and a fossil development scenario with maximum agricultural intensification. The main finding is compelling: the management of the solar park is the main determining factor of bumblebee density within the park, above land use changes in the surrounding landscape. Solar parks last between 25 and 40 years. That means decades of stable habitat in landscapes that are going to change and possibly get worse for pollinators. And there is an economic angle that is not minor either. Colonies located near diverse native vegetation avoid feast-famine dynamic which in monocultures weakens … Read more

We thought that solar parks were a death trap for birds. 19,000 hours of video and an AI have just dismantled the myth

by

During the last decade, the story of the energy transition has carried a shadow of suspicion. The visual image of a sea of ​​glass and silicon, dark and geometric, made us believe that the installation of large solar parks was equivalent to sterilizing the earth. We imagined a devastated ecosystem, an industrial desert where the hum of transformers chased away any trace of fauna. It seemed the inevitable price to pay for decarbonizing our economy. However, when science has decided to turn off the noise of public debate and turn on the cameras to observe what really happens under those plates, the result has broken all schemes. The AI ​​that watched the sky. One of the deepest fears was the theory that solar panels acted as a lethal mirage for birds. To clear up this mystery, an exhaustive study published in the scientific journal Diversity has resorted to the latest technology. A team of scientists installed high-definition cameras at five photovoltaic plants in the United States (spread across the desert Southwest, Midwest and Northeast) and collected more than 19,000 hours of daytime recordings over several years. Given the human impossibility of reviewing such a quantity of footage, the researchers developed an Artificial Intelligence model (MODT) designed specifically to detect and track moving objects. After filtering more than 4,000 hours of video, AI and human reviewers identified 68,646 bird appearances. An unprecedented find. Not a single bird collision with solar infrastructure was confirmed in all the observations analyzed. Far from colliding or being disoriented by the supposed “lake effect” of the panels, the images showed that the birds integrate the solar plant into their daily lives: they fly over it (an activity that accounted for around 54% of the observations), cross it underneath, look for food on the ground, preen and even nest in the metal structures themselves. More life inside than outside. Crossing the Atlantic, scientific evidence supports this coexistence. According to a study published in AgricultureEcosystems & Environmentcarried out by researchers in Poland, small-scale solar farms located in agricultural environments significantly increase birdlife diversity. After analyzing 43 photovoltaic parks and comparing them with 43 neighboring control areas, Polish experts documented that the vast majority of species improved their presence. Except for the meadowlark, which showed a negative reaction, species typically threatened in rural areas such as the wildcatcher or the northern stonechat appeared in much larger numbers within the park. As the study explains, the facilities provide them with safe breeding areas, tall grass (which is mowed late or left to grow) and fences perfect for perching, singing and monitoring their prey. This reality is identical in our country. As we recently explained in Xataka, Spanish photovoltaic enclosures are acting as authentic sanctuaries. The data collected by the Spanish Photovoltaic Union (UNEF) and audited by the environmental consulting firm EMAT in 2025 show an irrefutable pattern. In Minglanilla (Cuenca), 32 species of birds were found inside the solar plant compared to 19 in the external agricultural area. In Revilla Vallejera (Burgos) the balance was 39 versus 34, and in Trujillo (Cáceres), 31 versus 25. Furthermore, these enclosures not only house common birds, but have become home to protected or seriously declining species such as the curlew, the little bustard or the lesser kestrel. What is the secret of this explosion of life? The answer requires changing perspective. These parks are not being installed on virgin forests, but on fields that have been subjected to intensive agriculture for decades. According to Martín Behardirector of Studies and Environment at UNEF, by building a solar park a de facto “ecological exclusion zone” is created where tractors, pesticides and herbicides disappear. Human silence attracts weeds; weeds to insects; insects to small birds, and these to large birds of prey. The key: active management. If energy companies limit themselves to fumigating the land or sweeping the brushcutter to leave the ground bare for convenience, the park will effectively be an inert desert. For flora and fauna to return, will and active management are required: using native seeds, leaving wild ecological strips on the margins, allowing extensive grazing for natural control of forage and avoiding agrotoxins at all costs. The data has spoken. We had been fearing for years that solar panels would destroy life in the countryside. It turns out that, managed with rigor and sensitivity, they have the exact power to do just the opposite: heal the ecological wounds of centuries of agricultural exploitation and give nature a voice. Image | AnkerSolix Xataka | The largest study to date on solar panels and their effect on the field debunks several persistent myths

A scientist wants to build a space shield against solar storms. Your secret weapon: lithium and barium

by

Predict the arrival of very strong solar storms It is important for many reasons. Not only to keep an eye out and not get lost the most beautiful auroras. Also because these could affect satellites or terrestrial communications systems, so it is important to take precautions. The problem is that, no matter how much prevention methods have improved, we cannot do much more than be prepared for what is coming. Today there are no ways to stop these solar storms. However, a scientist from Boston University has announced that it is working on a method to strengthen the Earth’s natural shield against this type of phenomena. A stronger shield. The scientist in question is called Brian Walsh and is working in what he himself has called a wall against solar storms. Its objective is to send six ships to strategic points in a geostationary orbit, so that they release chemical elements capable of strengthening the magnetic field. These should be elements such as lithium or barium, since they are easily converted into positively charged ions when solar ultraviolet radiation hits them. At that point, the cargo released by the ships is converted to plasma. Precisely, what reaches Earth with solar storms is also plasma. However, there is a big difference. The one that comes from the sun consists of charged particles that move at very high speed, with great energy. On the other hand, what would be released into the magnetosphere would be cold, static plasma, which acts as a kind of wall, preventing this high-speed plasma from passing through the magnetosphere. A good shield when the activity is not too intense. The Earth has a great shield against solar storms. Generally, our magnetic field prevents these charged particles from the Sun from crossing into our atmosphere. This is because the magnetic field generally acts as a kind of rail on which the plasma circulates. The electrically charged particles are retained on these rails, but do not cross to the other side. They can only reach the atmosphere at the poles, where the inclination of the magnetic field lines acts as a kind of funnel. Even so, the charged particles that come from the surface of the Sun may already arrive somewhat weakened there. They interact with the gases in the atmosphere, exciting the atoms and causing the release of the light that makes up the auroras. But there are usually not very detrimental effects on communications. On the other hand, if the solar storm is very intense, the particles may be able to deform the rails of the magnetic field, filtering at the poles, but also in other places in the magnetosphere. Historical consequences. The consequences of these types of events have been seen numerous times throughout history. The most dramatic case was possibly that of Carrington eventwhich took place in 1859. It is considered the most powerful solar storm that has been recorded in history with consequences on Earth. Because of this large release of plasma from the Sun, auroras were seen in places as far from the poles as Hawaii and Cuba, but there were also less noticeable consequences, such as the burning of telegraph lines in many parts of the world. Another very notorious and dangerous case took place during the Vietnam War, in 1972, when a solar storm caused the accidental detonation of several magnetic underwater mines. And much more recent is the Gannon Storm, which in 2024 affected the GPS systems of planting tractors in several locations in the United Statescausing losses of 500 million dollars among farmers. But the situation could be worse. It is estimated that a major storm like Carrington’s could occur once a century. There hasn’t been one this big since then, so it could happen in the not too distant future. And today we depend much more on technologies than then. It is estimated that the losses could be more than 2 billion dollars. A natural process. This artificial wall that Walsh wants to create is inspired by a process that occurs naturally. And the thing is that, from time to time, small fragments of the Earth’s atmosphere break off and join the magnetic field, reinforcing it before the arrival of charged particles from the Sun. Lithium and barium would do something similar, artificially. Simulations only: For now, Brian Walsh has only made simulations of his invention, he has not tested it in space by any means. He himself recognizes that it is a complex process, so it must be done perfectly so that it causes more benefits than problems. Releasing ionizable elements at random could be harmful if not done in the right place. In addition, ways must be found to put ships in the correct place in their orbit before the storm arrives, so it is important to speed up the process while improving prediction methods. Handicaps. Although it may seem like a lot of mass is required to carry out this procedure, Walsh insists that the payload needs fall within current launch capabilities. However, he recognizes that it is an expensive process. Therefore, it would be necessary to look for ways to optimize it so that the necessary investment is not so large. For example, you want to work on pulsed release so that ionizable material is not wasted. In short, this method of controlling space weather is not at all something that will be used imminently, but it is clear that in the future we will need something like this. If not this method, another, but we greatly need something that protects us from the harshest elements of the Sun. Image | NASA | Walsh et al. In Xataka | A sunspot 17 times larger than Earth caused red auroras across half the world. It is a very rare event

We will run out of space on dry land one day. So Spain is already putting solar panels into the sea

by

Filling the field with solar panels has a physical limit. It is very likely that, while reading this, you have heard the debate that in our landscapes there are beginning to be more panels than crops. Faced with this growing land saturation, the alternative is already floating in the water: The San Enrique de Vigo Shipyard has just launched the first floating marine solar platform with purely Spanish technology. Named “Paiporta”—a tribute to the victims of the deadly DANA in Valencia in October 2024—this pioneering modular structure marks an industrial milestone. Its destiny is not to stay in the Galician estuary, but to be towed in the coming weeks to the Valencian coast to undergo its final test: validate its operability and generate electricity in the open sea. The sea as a technological ally. The saline and hostile environment of the sea offers conditions that multiply the efficiency of the panels. Traditional solar panels lose efficiency when they reach high temperatures. However, in these floating installations, seawater acts as a powerful natural coolant. By heating up less, the panels perform more and are capable of producing more electricity than their twins installed on the ground or on roofs. Added to this cooling effect is an intelligent design decision. Those responsible for the project They detail that the panels installed on the platform they use bifacial technology. This means that the installation not only absorbs direct solar radiation falling from the sky, but is also capable of capturing and generating energy from light bouncing off the sea surface. In the near future, they are expected to operate jointly with offshore wind farms (offshore), sharing evacuation infrastructure and maximizing the amount of clean energy that can be extracted from the same ocean coordinate. Mass-produced photovoltaic catamarans. The “how” is as important as the “what.” PV-bos (PhotoVoltaic-BlueNewables Offshore Solutions) technology has not been conceived to create unique and artisanal prototypes, but to revolutionize the assembly line. The project – called Renovar – pursues the development of platforms manufactured through industrialized and modular processes, directly inspired by mass manufacturing models. The objective is clear: reduce costs, cut production times and make photovoltaics offshore be competitive at a global level. To achieve this, the technological solution is based on an innovative catamaran-type design, specifically optimized to withstand harsh ocean conditions. This format allows the plates to be raised to a safe height above sea level, which not only improves energy performance, but also greatly facilitates maintenance work. The overall project contemplates a floating system of one megawatt of total power, divided into two PV-bos units of five hundred kilowatts each. Bringing this steel and silicon giant to the water was no easy task. From BlueNewables They explain that the launching It required a complex tandem lifting maneuver, using the emblematic and colossal cranes of the Vigo shipyard to place the structure with millimeter precision on the estuary. The industrial muscle. Behind this technological advance there is a powerful business and institutional alliance. The initiative combines the vast experience in marine structures of Astilleros San Enrique (belonging to the Meridional Group), the technological specialization of the Canarian engineering BlueNewables, and the technical collaboration of Soermar (Society for the Study of Maritime Resources). In addition, the project has the strong financial support of the Ministry of Industry and Tourism, and the Institute for Energy Diversification and Saving (IDAE) through its RENMARINAS program. On the other hand, it is a breath of fresh air and an opportunity for reinvention for the naval industry. José Luis Torres, general director of the San Enrique Shipyard, emphasizes that this success demonstrates the capacity of the traditional Spanish naval sector to lead cutting-edge developments. Far from remaining anchored in the construction of conventional ships, shipyards demonstrate that they can compete at the highest international level in the new markets opened by the energy transition. Next station: open sea. With the “Paiporta” now afloat, the Spanish industry sends a clear message to the world. In the words of Bernardino Couñagoco-founder and CEO of BlueNewables, this launch places his company “among the world leaders in the marine floating solar sector” and clearly demonstrates the enormous “industrial and technological capabilities that exist in Galicia and Spain to lead innovative energy solutions at an international level.” But the work is not finished. This successful maneuver in Vigo is just a decisive step. Now, the platform leaves behind the safety of the manufacturing phase in the shipyard to head towards the final stages: commissioning, connection and monitoring. When the “Paiporta” reaches the coasts of Valencia, it will have to demonstrate that the engineers’ mathematics can withstand the onslaught of waves and salt. The limit of the earth has already been surpassed; Now it’s time to conquer the horizon. Image | Bluenewables Xataka | Many towns oppose wind farms. In Euskadi they want to solve it the hard way: giving them 7% of their profits

In Aragon, farms are starting to do something with their slurry ponds: cover them with solar panels

by

only in Aragon there is more than 4,000 farms of pigs, farms from which every year thousands and thousands of tons of meat that later is marketed in the rest of the world. In the pigsties where the cattle are raised, however, something else is generated: an enormous amount of slurry that represents a real challenge environmental. At the end of the day, these wastes end up stored in ponds that emit harmful gasessuch as methane, ammonia or nitrous oxide. In Aragon they have had an idea: cover them with solar panels. From farms and slurry. Spain is one of the big producers of pork in the European Union, something that is possible thanks to a vast network made up of thousands of farms. The problem is that not only cattle come out of them. The industry generates millions of tons of slurry, a manure that can be used as fertilizerbut whose management poses some challenges. Although the composition varies depending on its source, farm manure generally generates greenhouse gases and pollutants, including methane and ammonia. It is not a minor issue if we take into account that some calculations They estimate that the Spanish pig sector produces just over 60 million tons of slurry each year. A challenge, an opportunity. Manure management takes time under the magnifying glass of the environmentalists and is regulated in the lawwhich includes measures such as cover at least part of the ponds or the use of systems that reduce their emissions. With this backdrop, a few years ago a consortium formed by the Aragonese firm Intergia Energía Sostenible and two other entities became a question: What if necessity were made a virtue and the space occupied by the slurry ponds was used to generate energy? What if, at the same time that manure deposits are covered to reduce their emissions, photovoltaics could be expanded? A “win-win”. The result was a project developed between 2020 and 2023 which, with the support of the European EAFRD fund and the Government of Aragon, dedicated itself to investigating this path. His idea was very simple: cover the slurry ponds with floating solar panels to achieve a win-win manual. Polluting emissions remain at the levels established by regulations and, at the same time, the farms improve the performance of their ponds, converting them into sources of solar energy production. Instead of covering rooftops or acres of fields with solar panels, they are deployed directly over manure deposits. Rethinking floating systems. From Intergia they explain that the project developed between 2020 and 2023 let some interesting lessons. For example, the ammonia in slurry ends up oxidizing and degrading some elements of photovoltaic installations. Specifically, certain parts of the module fastening system and wiring. Now the company wanted to go one step further and open the way. “While floating photovoltaics are already widely used in bodies of water, such as irrigation ponds or lakes, their use in other liquid bodies is in the study phase,” claims. Hence, the firm (along with other allies, such as the University of Zaragoza) is promoted Fotopura project that wants to help the pork sector reduce its emissions while generating energy. One project, two bets. To move in this direction, the company has set up two facilities pilot with which he hopes to learn more about the potential of photovoltaic panels to cover slurry ponds. In fact, both are designed to “maximize” reducing polluting emissions and resisting ammonia corrosion, although they differ in a key aspect: one of them uses standard commercial parts, designed for floating photovoltaics; the other has been designed specifically for ponds in which livestock manure is stored. A Zamora farm. That is the place where Fotopur has assembled its first prototype. In November They installed their photovoltaic cover on an 880 m2 slurry pond located on a breeding farm in Calzada de Tera, Zamora. To be more precise, Intergia deployed a 13.5 x 25 m floating platform with 56 panels and a peak power of 33.04 kWp. In total, the entire installation covers 90% of the pond and those responsible hope that it will help cover up to 22% of the farm’s electricity bill. The interesting thing is its components. The company used a commercial floating photovoltaic system used in water ponds. That is, it was not created specifically for slurry ponds. What Intergia and the rest of Fotopur’s partners have done is apply small changes. For example, to avoid corrosion, they replaced the steel parts that came from the factory with aluminum and stainless steel parts. To reduce friction they also incorporated a plastic sheet. …And a Zaragoza farm. He another prototype It was assembled weeks later at a bait farm in Tauste, in Zaragoza, and unlike the Castilla y León version, it was designed specifically for use in slurry ponds. For example, its creators devised a system that “minimizes the air-slurry contact surface between the floating elements and that will facilitate the support of the photovoltaic panels.” Another of the tasks they have had to face is “design a specific structure”formed by a matrix of anodized aluminum beams anchored to the platform and with brackets that allow the panels to have an inclination of 15º. In total they house 16 panels with a power of 9.44 kWp. The screws are made of aluminum and stainless steel to prevent corrosion. If its authors’ plans are fulfilled, the floating platform will “effectively” cover 10% of the pond’s surface and its photovoltaic production will reach 15.2 Mwh/year, enough to cover up to 53% of the farm’s electrical demand. That plus, claims Intergiawill allow the Aragonese exploitation to reduce its fuel consumption, “expensive and polluting.” And now what? With its prototypes Fotopur aims to continue advancing on the path that was already opened in 2020, solve the problems that were identified then and demonstrate the advantages of covering the slurry ponds with solar panels. Now, once the Zamora and Zaragoza facilities have been set up, the experts will dedicate themselves to controlling … Read more

Perovskite is the “holy grail” of solar energy, but its industrial manufacturing was hell. This new technique changes everything at once

by

Solar energy has a clear favorite to lead the future: tandem solar cells. The idea is brilliant and simple on paper, since if you combine traditional silicon with a top layer of revolutionary perovskite, you create a “super panel.” Perovskite swallows high-energy, short-wave light, and silicon finishes the job with longer waves. So the result is capturing much more solar spectrum and generating more electricity than with traditional plates. The valley of industrial death. The problem is that the photovoltaic industry had been banging its head against a wall for years. Perovskite was a wonder in the “Petri dish” of the laboratory, but manufacturing those very thin layers on a large scale, uniformly and quickly, was a true technical nightmare. Technology ran the risk of remaining an eternal promise, until a bridge built between Karlsruhe and Valencia showed that the problem was not the material, but the method. The 10 minute record. A team of researchers from the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT) in Germany and the University of Valencia, supported by institutions in France and Argentina, has just published a historic milestone in the magazine Nature Energy. They have designed an ultra-fast, solvent-free vacuum process that deposits the layer of perovskite at a pace never seen before. They have managed to manufacture tandem cells with a very high efficiency of 24.3% and the conversion process lasts just 10 minutes. To understand why this turns the industry upside down, you have to look at the factory numbers. As Professor Ulrich Paetzold (KIT) explainsIn the industry, not only efficiency matters, but also that the process is robust and scalable. This new method achieves a deposition rate of 47 nanometers per minute, that is, a speed ten times greater than that of conventional thermal evaporation methods. In addition, it consumes very little material and allows sources to be reused, drastically reducing costs. The “magic” of sublimation. The technique is called Closed Space Sublimation (CSS). We could say that it is like a microscopic oven: the precursor materials evaporate and collide directly against the silicon cell, which is placed just a few millimeters away. There they react on site to form the structure of the perovskite almost magically. Sofía Chozas-Barrientos, researcher at the University of Valencia, emphasizes that this system It allows you to do without solvents and save a lot of time. However, the recipe needed to be refined. For the tandem to work, the perovskite The upper part must act as a spectral filter (have a wider bandgap), and this is achieved by adding bromine. The drama was that, when trying to introduce bromine, it literally vanished during the process. The solution, according to researcher Alexander Dierckswas to create a mixed organic source by mixing methylammonium iodide and methylammonium bromide in an exact ratio of 3 to 1. Thus they managed to retain the bromine and nail an ideal band efficiency of 1.64 eV. Ready for the real world. The point is that good solar panels are not smooth; They are full of textures (with micropyramid shapes) to better catch the light. And this CSS process has worked perfectly on smooth, nanostructured and microstructured silicon, without having to touch a single button in the machine’s settings. Microscopes confirmed impeccable coverage in all topographies. As Professor Henk Bolink summarizesfrom the University of Valencia, a process that only works on smooth laboratory surfaces is of no use in industry. The fact that this sublimation achieves uniform layers on textured silicon is what makes this advancement real, viable and marketable. The future, on the roofs. Closing the gap between the laboratory and the factory is the great challenge of our energy era. With this Spanish-German milestone, the mass production of tandem solar technology finally removes the “unviable” label. The perovskite revolution no longer has to wait decades; is ready to make the leap to factories and, very soon, to rooftops around the world. Image | Eurekalert Xataka | Where you see an old bullet from the 17th century, Germany sees a magnificent source of perovskite for solar panels

Singapore achieves an almost invisible solar cell that generates energy even in the shade

by

The windows of a car parked in the sun or the lenses of smart glasses can be future charging points for a battery. And the technology has already reached that point thanks to scientists from the Nanyang Technological University in Singapore (NTU) who have just published in ACS Energy Letters a new type of transparent, ultra-thin solar cell based on perovskite, a semiconductor material with compositional versatility that conventional silicon cannot match. In short. The team, led by Associate Professor Annalisa Brunohas managed to manufacture cells just 10 nanometers thick. To have an even greater dimension: a human hair measures about 70,000 nanometers, that is, if that hair were the Eiffel Tower, this film would be a sheet of paper placed next to it. However, there is an even more revealing piece of information from the study, since the natural roughness of the surface on which the cell is deposited—about 2.8 nanometers according to microscopy measurements of the paper itself—represents almost a third of its total thickness. But the milestone is not in its form. The real paradigm shift proposed by this technology is the end of exclusive dependence on direct sun. Unlike conventional silicon panels, these perovskite devices generate electricity under indirect light and diffuse light conditions, making them especially useful in high-density urban environments where vertical facades and frequent cloud cover limit direct solar exposure. “Buildings consume about 40% of the world’s energy, so we urgently need technologies that turn their facades into energy generators,” explains Bruno. According to the team’s initial calculations, if we covered the glass façade of a large skyscraper (such as those in the Marina Bay financial district) with this technology, we could theoretically generate hundreds of megawatt-hours per year. We are talking about covering the annual consumption of about 100 four-bedroom apartments. These are preliminary figures, of course, but the potential is there. The secret is in evaporation. How do you keep a window looking like a window while generating energy? The answer is that these cells are semitransparent and neutral in color, with no apparent dye that reveals their presence. To manufacture them, the team used a vacuum thermal evaporation process: the base materials are heated in a vacuum chamber until they evaporate and are deposited on a surface forming an ultrathin and uniform film. Without toxic solvents, without the usual defects of solution methods. What distinguishes this work from previous attempts — and there have been many, the study compares its results to decades of studies — is that it is the first time ultrathin perovskite cells have been made using entirely vacuum processes, from start to finish. That is not a minor detail because vacuum processes are already used by the large-scale semiconductor industry, which considerably shortens the path to industrial manufacturing. The data, but with nuances. Let’s get to the numbers, which is where this technology really comes into its own. In their completely opaque versions, these sheets manage to transform 7%, 11% and 12% of the light they receive into energy, using minimum thicknesses of 10, 30 and 60 nanometers. What if we want the window to remain a window? The 60 nanometer semi-transparent model allows 41% of visible light to pass through and maintains a non-negligible efficiency of 7.6%. According to the researchers, it is the best that has been seen to date with this type of materials But here the real tension of this type of engineering appears: the more transparent, the less efficient. The study identifies the 30 nm cell as the one that best balances both variables—it has the highest potential for combined light utilization efficiency—but allows less visible light to pass through than the 60 nm cell. There is no perfect solution; There is a compromise that each application will have to negotiate according to its priorities. But what about stability? This is where any perovskite technology has to prove its maturity. The data from the study itself shows that 100 nm cells last projected for about 15,400 hours before degrading to 80% of their initial performance. The 60 nm ones, 5,800 hours. The 10 nm ones, 4,100 hours. These are figures that speak of a laboratory, not of a window exposed to rain, temperature changes and years of use. Professor Sam Stranks, from the University of Cambridge, sums it up precisely in a separate commentary on the study– The balance between transparency and generation is promising, but the next critical tests will be long-term stability, durability and performance on large surfaces. The roofs are already occupied. The next frontier of urban solar energy is the millions of square meters of glass that cover our buildings, cars and devices, surfaces that until now were passive by definition. The progress of the NTU team, already patented through NTUitive and in conversations with companies to validate the process, points in that direction. There is still a way to go, especially in real durability. But for the first time, that path has an industry-compatible manufacturing method, cells that operate with a fraction of the available light and a thickness that makes the word “invisible” not a marketing metaphor, but a technical description fairly close to reality. Image | ACS Energy Xataka | Coal is back in fashion in many countries. The problem is that it is clouding the sky from the solar panels

Aragon’s great plan to fill its reservoirs with solar panels has just collapsed due to a bureaucratic oversight

by

There is an image that sums up our times: reservoirs covered in solar panels floating like technological water lilies. It was the Government’s great bet to squeeze clean energy without consuming soil. However, that landscape has just collided head-on with the Supreme Court. According to the national climate roadmapBy 2030, Spain has to achieve a renewable penetration of 42% in final energy consumption and 74% in electricity generation. Swamp water, free of conflict over agricultural or forest land use, seemed the ideal setting. But the legislative rush has truncated the plan. The Supreme Court agrees with Aragón. The Fifth Section of the Contentious-Administrative Chamber of the Supreme Court has declared null Royal Decree 662/2024, of July 9. It has done so by upholding an appeal filed by the Autonomous Community of Aragon. The ruling annuls the regulations by operation of law and condemns the State to pay the procedural costs. The Aragonese regional executive had full legitimacy to appeal, since, as the court confirmed, the execution of this decree directly affected its powers in territorial planning, the environment, tourism and hydroelectric development. But what did it consist of? Published in the Official State Gazettethe objective of the text was to develop the regime to which the installation of these plants in state-managed reservoirs should be subject. The preamble of the standard strongly defended the technology, ensuring that these systems have better energy performance due to the cooling effect of water, reduce evaporation by casting shade, and slow down the growth of phytoplankton in waters at risk of eutrophication. To put order in this deployment, the Government articulated a strict system of temporary concessions that limited the exploitation of the plants to a maximum of 25 years, including extensions. The regulatory text also imposed space limits according to the ecological state of the waters. Likewise, the conditions required the promoters to provide a provisional bond of 4,000 euros per megawatt (MW) installed only for the application – which became up to 12,000 euros per MW to respond for damage to the public domain -, all conditional on the presentation of environmental studies, monitoring of invasive species and a continuous monitoring program to evaluate water quality. The legal stumbling block: legislating without asking. The central problem was not the content of the norm, but how it was approved. The Government omitted the process of prior public consultation with affected citizens and groups. This is a procedure that the ruling considers inexcusable, and its omission has been the nail in the coffin of the decree. The State tried to justify this legal shortcut in the courts with two arguments that the Supreme Court has dismantled. Firstly, the State Attorney’s Office alleged that there was an extraordinary situation of public interest due to the increase in energy prices due to the war in Ukraine. The High Court rejected this premise, recalling its own doctrine: to skip public consultation, it is not enough that there is urgency; the rule must also be of a purely organizational or budgetary nature, something that does not happen in this case. Secondly, the Government tried to rely on an “urgent processing” route. The response of the magistrates It was forceful.: “In this case, the aforementioned procedure cannot be dispensed with because there is no declaration of urgency nor was the procedure developed on that legal basis.” There was no agreement from the Council of Ministers that supported the rush; therefore, the shortcut was illegal. Why it matters: form, not substance. There is a crucial nuance that changes the reading of this news. The Supreme Court has not ruled that putting solar panels on water is a bad idea or that it is harmful. In fact, it rejected the rest of the complaints presented by Aragón, resolving that the text did not violate the principles of good regulation or legal certainty. We are facing what jurists call a formal procedural defect. The law falls only because the Government did not listen to the parties involved before acting. It is especially ironic that the Council of State itself I would have already warned to the Executive during the draft phase that this matter was going to need, in the medium term, a much more complete and systematic regulation. And now what? The renewable energy sector, which saw floating platforms as an unbeatable alternative to avoid the controversy over the consumption of agricultural land, is left in limbo. All the regulations of the decree disappear, including the modification of the Regulation of the Public Hydraulic Domain of 1986 that articulated these concessions. Meanwhile, in the affected territories, caution is already a reality. The Ebro Hydrographic Confederation, for example, had previously vetoed the installation of these floating plants in the Cinca swamps. The legal basis that allows these facilities continues to exist in the Water Law. What has fallen is the regulatory development, so the Government can go back to square one and draft a new regulation. But he will have to do it by scrupulously complying with the steps that he ignored this time. It has been shown that the rush in the energy transition has a high legal cost. The decree that was going to order solar panels on water has been shipwrecked. For not having listened before. Image | RawPixel Xataka | Europe throws away 16 billion a year in electronic waste. Spain has just turned on the first oven in Europe to recover them

Tesla’s solar roof was going to revolutionize this segment. Ten years later it pivots to manufacture lifelong solar panels

by

A decade ago Elon Musk seemed capable of anything, and many of us believed that had another revolution in his hand with Solar Roofthe Tesla solar roof that revolutionized conventional installations to camouflage them with the roofs of our houses. Their goal was to install 1,000 of these solar roofs every week by the end of 2019. The reality: there are about 3,000 solar roofs in total, and the company has decided to pivot to survive. Now it is a much more conventional company that may achieve the success that its original version never came close to. Promises and realities. The deployment of the “solar roof” proposed by the Tesla subsidiary It has been an operational failure. In 2016, the promises of performance combined with sustainable design and architecture (tempered glass tiles that generated light) were very striking. Ten years later, the product represents a residual fraction of Tesla Energy’s income, and the company has decided to surrender to the evidence. They will do what others were already doing: manufacture traditional solar panels mounted on existing roofs. Complex installation. Tesla’s big mistake was not in the panels themselves, but in the physics of the construction itself. A conventional roof is installed in a couple of days, but the Solar Roof required weeks of work for an ultra-skilled workforce. Being made up of hundreds or thousands of small individual tiles, installers had to make multiple electrical connections in an environment exposed to environmental conditions. Costs skyrocketed. Thus, a single failure could render an entire section unusable, and to make everything perfect the installation costs were high: about $106,000 before incentives, when putting solar panels on a conventional roof costs about $50,000 less. Payback is achieved in about 15-25 years, compared to 7-12 for conventional panels. In a lawsuit from several clients was revealed that in some cases the price of the installation ranged from 72,000 to 146,000 dollars. Difficulties everywhere. These types of projects proved to have many obstacles. For example, the different geometries of the roofs or their shadows. There was also the fact that Tesla tried to control the entire installation process with its own personnel, but labor shortages were a bottleneck that delayed deliveries. A reasonable (but late) decision. In early 2026 Tesla launched its new solar panel, the TSP-420which makes use of a new optimization system based on 18 energy zones. Among other things, this panel solves a problem that affected the inverter architecture of Solar Roof panels. It is a much more reasonable strategy, especially since it is much more profitable and faster to install a standard panel on a roof than to do so with Solar Roof’s original proposal. It is curious that the power generation business has not worked out for him, but yes do it that of storage with their Powerwall. Musk once again promises the (perhaps) impossible. At the Davos conference, Elon Musk announced that Tesla had as its objective create 100 GW per year of solar panel manufacturing capacity in the United States. For this purpose, the purchase of solar panels and cells is proposed. worth 2.9 billion dollars to the Chinese company Suzhou Maxwell Technologies. Too many promises. The goal seems once again exaggerated. Global solar installations in the United States in 2023 reached 32 GW, and Musk aims to reach 100 GW by the end of 2028. He would have to triple the total installed capacity that there was three years ago, and do it at a frenetic pace without any problems. We have heard this story before. The challenge seems too colossal even for the tycoon, and reminds us of the promise that he himself made in 2016. It was then that he assured that his solar roof would end up costing less than conventional roofs with traditional solar panels. He also said that the SolarCity Solar Gigafactory would produce 10 GW per year. Neither of those two promises came true. In Xataka | Mexico has a brutal potential for solar energy: at the moment it has begun to exploit it with agrovoltaics

Log In

Forgot password?

Forgot password?

Enter your account data and we will send you a link to reset your password.

Your password reset link appears to be invalid or expired.

Log in

Privacy Policy

Add to Collection

No Collections

Here you'll find all collections you've created before.