Periodic Reporting for period 2 - PanePowerSW (Transparent Solar Panel Technology for Energy Autonomous Greenhouses)
Reporting period: 2021-12-01 to 2023-03-31
The world population is estimated to reach 9.7 billion by 2050 according to forecasts from the United Nations. This will make the sustainable management of food more critical than ever. Shifting to more sustainable and effective methods of food production is imperative to overcome the challenges associated with the increasing population while maintaining a sustainable food supply. Based on these facts, greenhouse farming can be a solution for these increasing food demands, due to: (i) its potential for high productivity with reduced water (up to 10 times less) and agrochemicals use per unit of production, (ii) its production capacity is up to 10 times higher than open field-based agriculture per hectare (HA) and (iii) its high potential for the recycling of water and nutrients. However, greenhouse operation requires a high energy consumption for heating, cooling, ventilation and pumping, and has an adverse environmental impact.
To address this problem, Brite Solar – through the course of this Horizon 2020 project – plans to bring to the market a highly transparent solar panel that generates electricity from solar radiation currently optimized for use in greenhouses (and later in other applications such as buildings). The solar glass is designed for efficient, cost effective mass production and has major transparency, efficiency, and size flexibility competitive advantages over any existing technology.
To address this problem, Brite Solar – through the course of this Horizon 2020 project – plans to bring to the market a highly transparent solar panel that generates electricity from solar radiation currently optimized for use in greenhouses (and later in other applications such as buildings). The solar glass is designed for efficient, cost effective mass production and has major transparency, efficiency, and size flexibility competitive advantages over any existing technology.
During the first year of the project, Brite Solar has been finalising the nanocoating materials for its solar glass product with their performance validated. Brite Solar has also started construction on the greenhouses to demonstrate its PanePowerSW panels in an operational environments.
PanePowerSW is the only transparent PV solution to date which can effectively harvest the UV light and use it for energy generation, together with the other wavelengths of visible light. At the same time this is the only solar glass with effective visible light transparency higher than the native glass material can provide.
PanePowerSW will primarily compete with conventional silicon PVs, and new thin-film PVs which are relatively newer to the market and include: perovskite photovoltaics, organic photovoltaics, inorganic quantum dot cells and dye-sensitised solar cells (DSSC). All of these solutions have unproven transparency patterns, inability to harvest the UV light, difficulties for mass production at low cost, and inability to guarantee long life expectancy for the end product.
PanePowerSW has the potential to have a considerable socio-economic impact thanks to solving inefficiencies in greenhouse crop management as well as addressing key goals outlined within the EU’s Green Deal objectives (namely [1] Increasing the EU's climate ambition for 2030 and 2050 and [2] Supplying clean affordable and secure energy) as well as the UN’s 2030 agenda for sustainable development.
PanePowerSW will primarily compete with conventional silicon PVs, and new thin-film PVs which are relatively newer to the market and include: perovskite photovoltaics, organic photovoltaics, inorganic quantum dot cells and dye-sensitised solar cells (DSSC). All of these solutions have unproven transparency patterns, inability to harvest the UV light, difficulties for mass production at low cost, and inability to guarantee long life expectancy for the end product.
PanePowerSW has the potential to have a considerable socio-economic impact thanks to solving inefficiencies in greenhouse crop management as well as addressing key goals outlined within the EU’s Green Deal objectives (namely [1] Increasing the EU's climate ambition for 2030 and 2050 and [2] Supplying clean affordable and secure energy) as well as the UN’s 2030 agenda for sustainable development.