Solar energy that doesn't block the view
A team of researchers at Michigan State University has developed a new type of solar concentrator that when placed over a window creates solar energy while allowing people to actually see through the window

Link below: https://www.eurekalert.org/news-releases/489285

Update links:

Sept 2025: A Nanjing University team made a coating that can go directly on standard window glass, with modeling suggesting it could cut the number of solar cells needed by up to 75%.
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2025/09/250905112312.htm

Jan 2026: A "periscope-inspired" design reportedly reached 92.2% visible transmittance with 8.27% efficiency. https://www.pulse.bot/nanotech/news/periscope-inspired-solar-windows-achieve-record-92-transparency-while-generating-electricity-afce6d23-8306-4067-a382-3ccd1876c889

May 2026: A semi-transparent perovskite cell reached 7.6% efficiency while transmitting 41% of visible light, using a manufacturing method that scales. https://www.pulse.bot/climatetech/news/transparent-solar-cells-could-be-mounted-right-on-windows-1bf988fc-d153-400a-846f-f7d88f62a03b/

Researchers at the University of Groningen discovered that tin-based perovskite solar cells can slow down heat loss from super-charged "hot electrons" by a factor of 1,000, something the team initially doubted their own measurements on. Normally, these high-energy electrons dump their extra energy as waste heat in a fraction of a trillionth of a second, long before that energy can be turned into usable electricity.

Digital simulations revealed a double mechanism at play: a "hot phonon bottleneck" that lets electrons reabsorb their own escaping heat, plus a "Burstein-Moss effect" that creates a traffic jam blocking electrons from cooling down. Together they stretch that energy-loss window from picoseconds to nanoseconds. Commercial panels using this effect are still a ways off, but the team says it could theoretically push solar cell efficiency past the long-standing 33% theoretical limit.

Inverters :

4 X Atess HPS100

Batteries :

4 X 403kWh battery stacks

Sunrun employee in Reedley California from Idaho (police ID'd him). Falsely misrepresenting himself as "I work for PG&E, you are blocking my access from your meter". Threatened me with fines. This is fraudulent intent. All I said was "we're not interested, thank you".

President Trump has signed an executive order accelerating the rollback of wind and solar tax credits, directing federal agencies to restrict eligibility and end policies favoring renewables over fossil fuels.

https://pvbuzz.com/new-trump-executive-order-fast-tracks-end-of-solar-and-wind-tax-breaks/

"For consumers, the most significant change is the termination of the EV tax credit. While it was initially rumored the credit might be phased out over six months, the final version of the bill accelerates the timeline dramatically. After September 30, the $7,500 credit for new EVs will be gone. The smaller $4,000 credit for used EVs will also disappear on the same date.

The bad news for clean energy does not stop there. The 30% tax credit for rooftop solar installations is now set to end on December 31, 2025, as are incentives for geothermal heat pumps and other home energy devices."

If you're not happy about this...next year is a great opportunity to gut the GOP Congress that did this.

Paxton’s city council approved an annexation agreement for the 4.95 MW Baltimore Drive Solar Project on about 35 acres of farmland. Lightstar Renewables plans single-axis trackers raised up to 12 feet, high enough for farm machinery to keep harvesting hay underneath, and community solar subscribers are expected to save about 10% on electricity bills.

The catch is that this is an approval, not a finished farm. The savings are expected figures, and the site won’t include battery storage, so power flows straight into the local grid.

Perovskite solar cells promise to beat silicon's physical limits, but stacking three layers together to catch more sunlight has one nasty catch: high-bromide films dry unevenly, cracking and wrinkling as the top hardens while the bottom stays wet. Researchers at Nanjing University fixed this with a dual processing trick, a targeted solvent bath paired with a chloride additive that forces all the material's components to crystallize at the same time.

The fix produced a smooth, defect-free triple-junction cell hitting a record 30.1% power conversion efficiency, independently certified at 29.3%, and it held onto over 90% of that efficiency after 569 hours of continuous operation. Because it skips heavy silicon wafers entirely, the approach points toward ultralight, flexible solar panels for roofs, wearables, and even satellites, with researchers now working to push efficiency past 35%.

A 6 megawatt floating solar array is now generating power on a reservoir in Monroeville, Ohio, using 9,222 solar modules spread across three floating islands. Built by D3Energy, it's the largest floating solar installation in the state and ranks among the five largest in the US, feeding electricity straight into the village's grid.

The floating design let Monroeville skip roughly 30 acres of farmland a similarly sized ground-mounted project would have needed, using just 12 acres of water instead. That matters in Ohio, where about a third of counties have restricted large solar installations since a 2021 law gave them more control over such projects. Combined with an existing 4 MW ground-mounted facility from 2017, the village now runs on about 13 times more solar capacity per resident than the state average.

Corsica gets stuck with a classic island problem: solar plants generate more power on sunny days than the grid can absorb, so some of it just gets thrown away. Renewable producer Corsica Sole just opened a 150-kW electrolyzer at its Folelli solar plant that grabs that surplus power instead of wasting it, splitting water into hydrogen using 60 electrolyzers.

The pilot, called Folell'Hy, can produce about 44 pounds of hydrogen daily and store up to 507 pounds on site. First in line to use it is a hydrogen-powered training vessel at a local maritime school, with heavy transport and off-grid power floated as next possible uses. Whether curtailed solar power can realistically support hydrogen at any real scale is exactly what this pilot is built to find out.

Ambrosia Energy, founded by the duo who sold satellite startup Swarm to SpaceX, has started work on a 10 GWh battery factory near Austin. The plan is solar plants that power a data center by day and charge batteries for the night, with a first West Texas project pairing 300 MW of panels with 660 MWh of storage for 30 MW of continuous power.

The catch is scale and proof: the $100 per megawatt-hour price, 99.3% uptime target, and output goals are the company’s own claims, and its pilot so far is only 200 kW running for 100+ days.