Press / Newsroom

The expected addition of around 73 terawatts of new photovoltaic capacity by 2050 will require large quantities of raw materials, including copper and aluminum. Resource requirements and investment costs can be significantly reduced if the voltage level of the PV system is raised to medium voltage. The “PVgoesMV” project aims to demonstrate, through the construction and operation of two pilot plants, that this step is technically feasible and economically viable for large-scale PV plants. These are the world's first PV plants with a 3 kV string inverter. Manufacturers of all key system components for a PV park are supporting the project, which is scheduled to run for three years.

Under the motto “Driving the transition to renewable and carbon-free energy,” the international EuroSun2026 conference will take place in Freiburg from September 14 to 18, 2026. The Fraunhofer Institute for Solar Energy Systems ISE, together with Albert Ludwig University of Freiburg, is the local and scientific host of the conference. Contributions to the conference can be submitted until March 1, 2026 (Call for Abstracts).

In 2025, the share of renewables in Germany’s net public electricity generation amounted to 55.9 percent, as in the previous year. Wind power took first place as the strongest net electricity producer, followed by photovoltaics, which increased its production by 21 percent in 2025 and overtook lignite for the first time. The share of electricity generation from fossil fuels stagnated in 2025, with the decline in lignite-based electricity generation being offset by rising natural gas consumption. The share of imports in the electricity mix fell in 2025 compared to the previous year. This analysis is based on the energy-charts.info data platform of the Fraunhofer Institute for Solar Energy Systems ISE, which provides interactive graphs on electricity generation for the whole of Europe.

Dr. Moritz Kroll, team leader of Battery Data Science at the Fraunhofer Institute for Solar Energy Systems ISE, will establish the independent junior research group NADINE (Battery Data Science) at the University of Freiburg as part of the “BattFutur – Junior Research Groups in Battery Research” program. The interdisciplinary project will start in February 2026 at INATECH in the Faculty of Engineering and will run for five years. The focus will be on data-based methods for non-destructive quality control of battery cells that reduce the consumption of critical resources in manufacturing.

Until 2009, German PV system owners hardly used any of the electricity they generated themselves, as the feed-in tariff for photovoltaic electricity was higher than the price of electricity purchased from the grid. Since this ratio has reversed and sector coupling has expanded the possibilities for use, the economically motivated self-consumption of solar power in Germany has risen sharply. Research scientists at the Fraunhofer Institute for Solar Energy Systems ISE have now developed the first method for quantifying PV self-consumption based on data from the market master data register and transmission system operators. They published their findings in an analysis for the German Federal Environment Agency.