Objective
Our project arises from a joint business venture between Solarbox Solar Solutions (Solarbox) and Generaciones Fotovoltaicas de la Mancha (GFM) to develop a portable solution (Suninbox®) for the off-grid generation market. The joint venture started in 2007 for the design of a solar tracker (Patent ES 2322527B2) to increase the collection efficiency of solar systems by more than 30% whilst making it easy to transport to cover the lack of solutions in the market with good price/characteristics rate.
Suninbox® consists of a portable Solar PV energy solution that integrates in a certified container all the components necessary to generate electricity autonomously. This will allow both Solarbox and GFM to gradually reach industrial scale with increasingly lower costs (objective price of 4.25 €/W per 12kWp module), increasing penetration in the international market.
Our end users belong to specific markets where there is a need of affordable and portable off-grid energy sources (not connected to the main or national electrical grid):
-RURAL AREAS: they represent 90% of all territory in the EU 27 and 56% of the population. They generate 43% of all economic value and support 55% of all employment. In these areas, there are 12,000 farms of which 69% are small remote farms of less than 5 Ha of agricultural land.
-TRANSCEIVER STATIONS FOR MOBILE COMMUNICATIONS NETWORKS: the off-grid energy source demand in this sector is steadily increasing with a forecast revenue growing from $1.6 billion in 2012 to more than $10.5 billion in 2020. There are approximately 5 million radio base station sites in the global telecommunication network, 900,000 located in areas where central electricity grid connections are unavailable.
-RURAL ELECTRIFICATION IN DEVELOPING COUNTRIES: universal access by 2030 will require 399 TWh for mini-grids and 171 for off-grid. The global market potential is expected to be in the order of more than 250,000 million €.
Fields of science
- engineering and technologyenvironmental engineeringenergy and fuelsrenewable energysolar energy
- engineering and technologyelectrical engineering, electronic engineering, information engineeringelectrical engineeringpower engineeringelectric power distribution
- engineering and technologyelectrical engineering, electronic engineering, information engineeringelectrical engineeringpower engineeringelectric power generation
- social scienceseconomics and businessbusiness and managementemployment
- agricultural sciencesagricultural biotechnologybiomass
Programme(s)
Topic(s)
Funding Scheme
SME-1 - SME instrument phase 1Coordinator
26580 ARNEDO LA RIOJA
Spain
The organization defined itself as SME (small and medium-sized enterprise) at the time the Grant Agreement was signed.