Descripción del proyecto
Una nueva forma de aprovechar la energía solar
La tendencia mundial hacia la energía limpia ha dado lugar a una demanda constante y creciente de energía fotovoltaica más eficiente y fiable. El proyecto financiado con fondos europeos ConPhoNo propone una innovación consistente en una lámina fina de plástico capaz de recolectar la luz solar y dirigirla a un punto de emisión de luz intensa. El proyecto investigará preguntas sin responder relacionadas con el uso de este invento con el fin de preparar el producto para su comercialización. Además, estas láminas de concentración se probarán en la tecnología fotovoltaica de concentración, considerado el concepto líder en el campo de la energía solar. El objetivo del proyecto es demostrar que las láminas de concentración pueden sustituir satisfactoriamente a los concentradores con lentes de Fresnel existentes, lo que permitirá aumentar la eficiencia de la tecnología fotovoltaica de concentración y reducir los costes de producción.
Objetivo
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.
Ámbito científico
Programa(s)
Régimen de financiación
ERC-POC-LS - ERC Proof of Concept Lump Sum PilotInstitución de acogida
42119 Wuppertal
Alemania