Projektbeschreibung
Eine neue Möglichkeit, die Sonnenenergie zu nutzen
Der weltweite Trend hin zu sauberen Energien hat zu einer anhaltenden und wachsenden Nachfrage nach effizienterer und verlässlicherer Photovoltaik geführt. Das EU-finanzierte Projekt ConPhoNo stellt eine neue Erfindung vor, die aus einer dünnen Kunststofffolie besteht, die Sonnenlicht sammeln und auf einen Punkt bündeln kann, wo dann intensives Licht ausgestrahlt wird. Das Projekt wird offene Fragen zu Anwendungsbereichen der Erfindung mit dem Ziel untersuchen, das Produkt marktreif zu machen. Darüber hinaus wird die Verwendung dieser Folien zur Bündelung der konzentrierenden Photovoltaik erprobt, die als das führende Konzept zur Gewinnung von Sonnenenergie gilt. Das Ziel des Projekts ist, zu zeigen, dass die Folie die bestehenden Konzentratoren auf der Grundlage von Fresnel-Linsen erfolgreich ersetzen können, was zu einer verbesserten Effizienz und geringeren Produktionskosten von konzentrierenden Photovoltaikanlagen führen würde.
Ziel
I invented a thin plastic foil capable of collecting sunlight from a certain incident angle and guiding it to a spot of intense light emission, thereby concentrating the light by a factor of 300 and more.
In the first step, ConPhoNo will evaluate the application of the foils for safety features. Here, the foils will be laminated to a product showing bright colorful pictures when properly aligned to the sun. This application exhibits a high chance of success as the technical feasibility has already been proven, and the relevant market is well-known by the ConPhoNo partner. It is therefore the goal to put these safety features on the market.
In parallel, the application of the concentrator foils will be tested in concentrated photovoltaics (CPV), which is the most efficient of all solar energy concepts (world record of 46%). In that case, solar cells will be placed at the spots of intense light emission. Differently from safety features, where a customer is actively checking a product for authenticity by holding it at the right angle into the sun, this is more complex in CPV.
In step two, the concentrators will be used with mechanical sun-tracking like state-of-the-art CPV. Here, the concentrator foils will replace the Fresnel lens based concentrators used today. I am confident that these concentrators are superior as they are a hundred times thinner, much easier to produce, and they enable bandgap matching, which may double the efficiency of CPV, reaching a theoretical limit of about 86%.
The ability to produce very thin concentrators will also increase the motivation of the CPV industry to scale down the bulkiness of the sun-tracking system.
In the third step, it will be evaluated if thin beam steering devices based on electro-wetting may become industrially available and if they can be combined with the new concentrators. The resulting thin CPV modules would drastically reduce the cost of CPV and literally boost worldwide solar energy production.
Wissenschaftliches Gebiet
Programm/Programme
Thema/Themen
Finanzierungsplan
ERC-POC-LS - ERC Proof of Concept Lump Sum PilotGastgebende Einrichtung
42119 Wuppertal
Deutschland