Description du projet
Une nouvelle manière d’exploiter la puissance du soleil
La tendance mondiale à l’énergie propre a entraîné une demande constante et croissante de systèmes d’énergie photovoltaïque plus efficaces et plus fiables. Le projet ConPhoNo, financé par l’UE, propose une nouvelle invention consistant en une fine feuille de plastique capable de capter la lumière du soleil et de la diriger vers un point d’émission de lumière intense. Le projet examinera les questions en suspens liées à l’application de l’invention afin de préparer le produit pour le marché. En outre, ces feuilles de concentration seront testées dans le photovoltaïque à concentration (CPV), qui est considéré comme le concept de pointe en matière d’énergie solaire. L’objectif du projet est de prouver que les feuilles de concentration peuvent remplacer avec succès les concentrateurs existants à base de lentilles de Fresnel, ce qui permettra d’augmenter l’efficacité des CPV tout en réduisant les coûts de production.
Objectif
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.
Champ scientifique
Programme(s)
Régime de financement
ERC-POC-LS - ERC Proof of Concept Lump Sum PilotInstitution d’accueil
42119 Wuppertal
Allemagne