News

Christopher Hebling, division director of Hydrogen Technologies at the Fraunhofer Institute of Solar Energy Systems ISE, was appointed Honorary Professor of Chemical Engineering in the Faculty of Engineering and the Built Environment at the University of Cape Town (UCT) in South Africa. Besides research and teaching, Hebling will promote the cooperation between the Fraunhofer-Gesellschaft and the South African scientific community in the fields of hydrogen and solar technologies.

The first Solar World Congress in South America takes place in Santiago de Chile from November 4 to 7, 2019. The Congress will be held by the International Solar Energy Society (ISES) together with the International Conference on Solar Heating and Cooling for Buildings and Industry of the IEA (International Energy Agency) Solar Heating and Cooling Programme (SHC). The local host is SERC-Chile (Solar Energy Research Center), a consortium of seven Chilean Universities, as well as the Fraunhofer-Chile Foundation. The Fraunhofer Institute for Solar Energy Systems ISE and the Center of Solar Energy Technologies-Fraunhofer Chile Research (FCR-CSET) participate in the congress with a booth and presentations by its experts.

In honor of her excellent research, Dr. Laura Mundt was awarded the Eva Mayr-Stihl Young Researcher Award of the Eva Mayr-Stihl Foundation. Her doctoral dissertation entitled “High-Resolution Analysis of Perovskite Absorbers in Photovoltaics” was carried out at the Institute for Sustainable Technology Systems (INATECH) of the University of Freiburg and the Fraunhofer Institute for Solar Energy Systems ISE in Freiburg. The prize was awarded at the opening ceremony of the 2019/2020 academic year in Freiburg.

In the future electricity grid, inverters must assume greater responsibility for the grid stability due to higher feed-in of fluctuating renewables. In Freiburg at the new multi-megawatt laboratory of the Fraunhofer Institute for Solar Energy Systems ISE, power electronic devices are developed and tested according to these new functionalities. A few weeks after officially opening the new lab building in North Freiburg, a solar inverter with a nominal power of 2.5 megawatts and a maximum DC voltage of 1500 volts was tested in the accredited TestLab Power Electronics.

Photovoltaics is a young, commercially available clean energy technology, however, its origin goes back to 1839 when Edmond Becquerel first reported the effect of light on the generation of electric currents in matter. Today, photovoltaics has become a pillar of the energy system transformation. The symposium in recognition of Edmond Becquerel will be held on March 24, 2020 in Paris.

The 2nd workshop within the RAISELIFE project takes place on Thursday, 28 November in Düsseldorf, Germany. Among the speakers will be scientists from the Fraunhofer Institute for Solar Energy Systems ISE who will talk about the durability of CSP mirrors and absorber coatings as well as the optimization of recoating intervals.

Sufficient production capacity and a European supply chain would make vertically integrated photovoltaic production in Germany and the rest of Europe competitive. This was the conclusion of a study commissioned by the German Mechanical Engineering Industry Association (VDMA) and carried out by the Fraunhofer Institute for Solar Energy Systems ISE. Researchers compared the costs of producing the leading technology based on surface-passivated monocrystalline silicon solar cells in Germany/Europe with production in China.

Like other countries in Southeast Asia, Vietnam is experiencing strong economic and population growth. Its energy demand is currently increasing by ten percent each year and the competition for land use is growing as a result. With the project “SHRIMPS” (Solar-Aquaculture Habitats as Resource-Efficient and Integrated Multilayer Production Systems), the Fraunhofer Institute for Solar Energy Systems ISE and its partners want to demonstrate that dual land use for aquaculture and photovoltaics can solve these systemic problems. Pilot plants are being installed and tested along the Mekong’s upper basin and in the Mekong Delta.

PV Nano Cell Ltd., the developer of Sicrys™ conductive inks based on single crystal nano-particles of silver and copper, and the Fraunhofer Institute for Solar Energy Systems ISE announced remarkable results using the ink in the development of innovative metallization technologies for solar cells with Inkjet and Rotational Printing.

Researchers at the French Centre de Nanosciences et de Nanotechnologies (C2N) have succeeded, in collaboration with researchers at Fraunhofer ISE and others, to efficiently trap sunlight in a solar cell thanks to an ultrathin absorbing layer made of 205 nm-thick gallium arsenide (GaAs) on a nanostructured back mirror. With this new process of fabrication, an efficiency of nearly 20% was obtained.