InnoEnergy, the sustainable energy accelerator for Europe, is exhibiting at INTERSOLAR Europe between the 31st of May and 2nd of June. The organisation supports and invests in innovation at every stage of the journey – from classroom to end-customer. With its network of partners, it builds connections across Europe, bringing together inventors and industry, graduates and employers, researchers and entrepreneurs, businesses and markets.
InnoEnergy works in three essential areas of the innovation mix:
- Education to help create an informed and ambitious workforce that understands the demands of sustainability and the needs of industry.
- Innovation Projects to bring together ideas, inventors and industry to create commercially attractive technologies that deliver real results to customers.
- Business Creation Services to support entrepreneurs and start-ups who are expanding Europe’s energy ecosystem with their innovative offerings.
InnoEnergy is showcasing the following seven InnoEnergy supported European companies at INTERSOLAR Europe in hall A3, booth 240 including:
With the end to feed-in tariffs, the race is on to come up with new solutions to keep PV alive. In addition to the need for low-cost PV panels, there is also a requirement to lower the costs of the distributed installed systems and the energy produced as a means of compensating for ever-increasing electricity prices.
The BeON microinverter is a device that allows any PV panel to be connected directly to an ordinary wall socket, safely and easily. This means solar systems can be sold anywhere and as cheaply as DIY kits, lowering €/W costs significantly and engaging people directly in renewable technologies. The BeON microinverter is a technology marvel: the most reliable piece of electronics commercially available, it has a 25-year warranty and a zero-failure rate in 10.000 units sold.
The existing built environment has only limited space for solar panels and non-shaded areas are rare. Furthermore, currently used systems are complex, quite large and heavy, making them difficult for consumers to apply on small roofs. For flat roofs, no solutions exist.
Compact Solar is a small light-weight solar cell modular system, specially developed for use on flat roofs and smaller surfaces. It enables more solar energy to be harvested in the built environments and urban areas.
The system allows every available flat roof surface to be used for the generation of solar power. Because of its low height, the system is invisible to passers-by, and can even be installed on monuments.
As more photovoltaic (PV) developers, engineers, building developers and property owners recognise the huge potential for energy savings offered by innovative new building-integrated photovoltaics (BIPV), interest is growing fast.
However, current modelling tools struggle to calculate the performance of a BIPV system; understand its impact on a building’s energy performance; ensure regulatory compliance of innovative BIPV products; and collaborate with partners.
EnerBIM has developed Product: BIMsolar, a building information modelling (BIM) platform that overcomes these challenges and encourages greater use of BIPV in residential, commercial and industrial buildings.
With the decreasing and, probably, the eventual disappearance of the feed in tariff of PV electricity, the photovoltaic market is moving toward self-consumption. Yet the investment return is still low, particularly in countries like France (with its low standard electricity price) or in northern Europe, (due to low irradiation). Developers are waiting for solutions that are able to increase the IRR of the projects.
The best photovoltaic module (PV) in the world can provide 22% yield. This means 78% is lost, mainly through heat. The EPC Solarie solution allows for the recovery of heat dissipated by a conventional photovoltaic module: this can offer up to twice the overall energy efficiency! The hot air collected can be used for:
- Heating the building in winter
- Heating water in summer
- Drying processes (cereals, tiles, wood…).
Crystalline silicon technologies dominate the photovoltaic market. The module cost breakdown shows that approximately 40% of the module cost is associated with the wafer cost. The PV industry is demanding further cost reductions. However, the current manufacturing processes for mono crystalline silicon wafers and economies of scale have exhausted its ability to further take down the cost of the wafers substantially.
NEXWAFE’s kerfless wafer technology, Epicomm, hits the sweet spot of the PV industry needs by combining a true drop-in replacement for costly Cz silicon wafers with a high-cost reduction potential:
- Providing a drop-in replacement of Cz wafers guarantees an easy use in existing solar cell and module production lines.
- High-quality n-type silicon wafers enable solar cell manufacturers to produce high solar cell efficiencies.
- Higher average cell efficiency by supplying wafers with a narrow quality distribution and full square wafers.
- Unbeatable wafer costs by minimising energy and material consumption and improving capital efficiency creating a high-cost reduction potential which actively contributes to the photovoltaic energy competitiveness.
Nowadays, preservation of adequate electrical quality has become a major problem. Industrial plants with highly automated production lines cannot operate properly without sustainable power supply with the precisely defined power quality parameters. Thus, there appears to be a market need for fast solutions for identifying the disturbance sources, protection of energy customers from PQ disturbances and provide an intelligent interface for smart grid’s prosumers.
The objective of ProInterface is to deliver commercially viable power electronics solutions: Active Power Filter, Dynamic Voltage Restorer and Prosumer Interface. Those solutions will gradually enable integrating energy prosumers with a power system and maintaining proper power supply conditions at the point of common coupling. The prosumer interface provides comprehensive multiple functionalities currently offered only partially by devices available on the market.
The DC voltage in rooftop mounted PV panels can reach levels of up to 1000 V. In emergency situations, and in cases of faulty wiring, individuals, especially firefighters, can be exposed to dangerous levels of electricity.
Solar PV Panels’ roof installation is one step towards sustainability. Owing to the high DC voltage (around 600-1000 V) on roofs, there is an increased risk of individuals, especially fire fighters, working in emergency situations, receiving an electric shock. SolAngel is a device that can make this environment safe. It can also monitor solar panel operation and increase its efficiency. Solar panel operation can be monitored and controlled through a mobile app and webpage that can be connected to the building’s control unit as well as to the SOS/alarm system of the fire department.
Image: Courtesy of InnoEnergy