News

The IFAT, the world’s leading trade fair for water, sewage, waste and raw materials management, is being held in Munich, Germany from May 14 – 18. About 3100 exhibitors and more than 130 000 visitors are expected to attend. The Fraunhofer Institute for Solar Energy Systems ISE is presenting their innovations for clean water at a communal booth together with the Fraunhofer Alliance SysWasser and the Solar Spring GmbH (Hall B2, Booth 215/314).

Professor Christoph Reinhart from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) is currently spending time at the Fraunhofer Institute for Solar Energy Systems ISE as visiting researcher and award winner of this year’s Fraunhofer-Bessel Research Award of the Humboldt Foundation. He will be spending five weeks at the institute working together with Fraunhofer researchers. During his research stay, Reinhart will be cooperating with scientists at Fraunhofer ISE and other European research institutes to define future-oriented themes and research topics in the areas of building technologies and smart cities.

At the 14th International CPV Conference in Puertollano, Spain, Juan Francisco Martínez Sánchez, doctoral student at Fraunhofer ISE, was distinguished with the Student Award for his talk »4-Terminal CPV Module Capable of Converting Global Normal Irradiance into Electricity.« Decisive is that his module not only uses the direct sunlight that is concentrated by lenses onto the miniature concentrator solar cells no bigger than several millimeters in size, but also the scattered light and diffuse radiation. This allows the module to achieve conversion efficiencies (with respect to global normal irradiance) that are unparalleled worldwide. Up to 36.8 percent module efficiency has already been measured on the roof of Fraunhofer ISE, and the development continues.

For homeowners, the limited roof area often raises the question: Electricity from photovoltaics or heat from solar thermal? Photovoltaic-thermal hybrid collectors (PVT collectors) combine both technologies in a single component. In recent years, PVT collectors have seen increased interest from industry and science, leading to new developments in innovative PVT collector and systems.

On February 27th, the MATS power plant was officially inaugurated in the City of Science and Technology in Borg El Arab, which is located in Egypt west of Alexandria. The first of its kind, the new solar thermal power plant was developed within the project »Multipurpose Applications by Thermodynamic Solar - MATS«, carried out by a consortium of European and Egyptian partners and co-financed by the European Union. The Fraunhofer Institute for Solar Energy Systems ISE provided scientific support for the project.

Prof. Reimund Neugebauer, President of the Fraunhofer-Gesellschaft, and Dr. Max Price, Vice-Chancellor of the University of Cape Town, Sign Memorandum of Understanding

The Energy Charts, compiled by the Fraunhofer Institute for Solar Energy Systems ISE, are the most detailed database for energy and market data on power generation in Germany and thus an important source for journalists and decision-makers. The interpretation of the data and graphics, however, is to some extent complex. A current project of Fraunhofer ISE is to improve the display of data and graphics in order to make them easier to use for journalists. Other users of the site will also profit from these improvements.

Prof. Frank Dinter became the new director of the Fraunhofer Chile Research Center for Solar Energy Technologies CSET in Santiago de Chile on 13th February. For the past four years, Dinter, who has a background in mechanical engineering, served as Professor for Concentrating Solar Thermal Power at the University of Stellenbosch in South Africa as well as Director of the Solar Thermal Energy Research Group (STERG). Previously he worked for more than 20 years in industry; five of which he was Director of Solar Energy at RWE Energy.

Benjamin Knödler, project manager and employee of the Fraunhofer Institute for Solar Energy Systems ISE was in Bolivia on behalf of the GIZ, a provider of international cooperation services for sustainable development and international education work. Together with Georg Hille, a former employee of Fraunhofer ISE, Knödler gave training courses on photovoltaic (PV) systems within the program “Programas de Energia Renovables.”

Researchers from Fraunhofer ISE announced a record efficiency of 31.3 percent for their silicon-based multi-junction solar cell last year. With this record, they entered the competition for the GreenTec Award 2018 and have now successfully reached the final round.