Today, about 75% of all the energy produced by humanity is squandered as waste heat, making it the biggest source of energy on the planet. Current approaches to energy recapture, are large, costly and complex, resulting in more than 95% of waste heat that has no energy recovery solution today deployed to capture it, totaling in around 2,000TWh of untapped but readily available energy in the EU, just from electrical power production.
With LightCatcher, we aim to introduce exactly such a solution for the PV industry – a sector that produces huge amounts of wasted heat energy in the EU, approx. 384TWh of unexploited energy annually, representing around 14% of the total European electricity consumption in 2017 (2.7GWh). Today, more than 80% of the solar radiation falling on PV cells is not converted into electricity but wasted.
LightCatcher will allow the implementation of a cost-effective plugin device (H2E-Module) for new and existing PV panels that can quadruple the electrical output power by re-utilising otherwise-dissipated heat energy and cooling the entire PV device. With our revolutionary approach, we enable standard PV panels to convert 80% compared to currently only 20-25% of the incoming solar energy into electricity, while additionally cooling and thus protecting the PV materials against heat stress. This game-changing innovation has the potential for electricity cost savings of €345.5/panel/year and €200.2/panel/year for household and non-household consumers, respectively, as well as CO2 emission savings of 717.3kg CO2/panel/year.
Our key objective for this SME Phase-1 Feasibility Study was to verify the technical, practical and commercial viability of our disruptive solution. Therefore, we conducted the following activities:
1. Task 1: Market and Commercialisation feasibility study: We have carried out a full market research study by revising target regions, market segments and commercialisation channels. Our plan is to reach commercial B2B agreements with key solar park operators and become certified parts supplier for the OEM equipment in our target PV market sectors.
2. Task 2: Product development feasibility study: We have validated the improved solar output power generation as well as the plugin feature of our solution.
3. Task 3: Regulatory feasibility study: We have prepared the detailed protocols in line with UNI and IEC norms, as well as EU PV directives for future market launch of our H2E-Module product in our targeted markets. We updated our IPR analysis to ensure our freedom-to-operate by drawing on patent agents.
4. Task 3: Economic and financial feasibility study: We have revisited the competitors, investment required for our strategy and economic viability. We have formulated the complete business plan including targeted market segments, pricing, risk assessment and mitigation, budgeting & economic forecasting.
