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Dr. Elias Frei took over as head of the Hydrogen Technologies division at the Fraunhofer Institute for Solar Energy Systems ISE in Freiburg on October 1, 2024. The chemist previously held leading positions at BASF SE.

Lithium-ion batteries are the state of the art in stationary energy storage, but parts of the raw material extraction are controversial due to environmental and social problems. The Fraunhofer Institute for Solar Energy Systems ISE has therefore joined forces with partners in the INFAB project to research an alternative technology based on zinc-ion batteries. The project covered all process stages, from the development of cell chemistry and manufacturing processes to the battery management system.

Scientists at the Fraunhofer Institute for Solar Energy Systems ISE have succeeded in producing a perovskite silicon tandem solar cell with 31.6 percent efficiency. The new 1 cm² solar cell is special in that the perovskite layer of the top cell was deposited on an industrially textured silicon heterojunction solar cell using a hybrid manufacturing route. The successful use of textured standard silicon solar cells and the uniform application of the perovskite layer on the texturized surface are important prerequisites for the industrial production of perovskite silicon tandem solar cells.

Spurred by the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA), a large number of photovoltaic factories along the entire PV value chain are currently being constructed in the USA. The Fraunhofer Institute for Solar Energy Systems ISE is providing support in technology selection, product design and even during factory ramp-up for some of these companies. PV manufacturers are focusing on production technologies for high-efficiency heterojunction solar cells and particularly for TOPCon solar cells. Also shingle matrix PV modules for use in integrated PV products and space applications are becoming very popular. At the RE+ held from September 9-12 in Anaheim, California, researchers from Fraunhofer ISE will be on location to provide information on the advantages and disadvantages of current PV technologies and their manufacturing processes.

How can Indian cities be decarbonized through renewable energies and modern energy system technology? What experiences from Europe can possibly be transferred? This is what Mrinal Madas from the Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ) GmbH in New Delhi is currently researching as a guest scientist at the Fraunhofer Institute for Solar Energy Systems ISE. The business manager and engineer has been awarded a German Chancellor Fellowship by the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation for prospective leaders from India.

Concentrator photovoltaics (CPV) could once again become an economically attractive and high-efficient PV technology for regions with high direct solar irradiance. To leverage its advantages, Fraunhofer Institute for Solar Energy Systems ISE and Soltec have partnered to develop a prototype of a two-axis tracker which is designed to smoothly integrate with Fraunhofer ISE’s latest micro-CPV technology. Soltec and Fraunhofer ISE plan to install a first prototype in Spain by the end of 2024.

Representatives from the Fraunhofer Institute for Solar Energy Systems ISE (Germany), the National Renewable Energy Laboratory NREL (USA), the National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology AIST (Japan), as well as other leading solar research institutes and international participants from industry came together at the 4th Terawatt Workshop of the Global Alliance of Solar Energy Research Institutes (GA-SERI) from June 6-8 in Asilomar, CA, USA. The discussions focused on the progress of photovoltaic (PV) technology but also on the shared challenges of achieving sustainability and circularity in the rapidly growing multi-terawatt PV market. Approximately 70 participants from 14 countries attended the event.

Photovoltaic systems equipped with solar trackers show a 20 to 30 percent gain in energy yield compared to fixed ground-mounted systems. Besides this, the layout design and alignment can take other criteria into account, such as the light requirements of certain plant varieties underneath agrivoltaic and biodiversity-PV systems or also the grid feed-in at certain times of the day. In the research project "DeepTrack", Zimmermann PV-Tracker GmbH, part of the Zimmermann PV-Steel Group, and the Fraunhofer Institute for Solar Energy Systems ISE are improving tracking algorithms with a digital twin that uses deep learning to calculate optimized control approaches. Among other things, the digital twin learns from the data of its “real” twin, a PV tracker built by Zimmermann PV-Tracker, which is located at the Fraunhofer ISE’s Outdoor Performance Lab in Merdingen near Freiburg.

Researchers from the Technical University of Berlin, Rena Technologies GmbH, and the Fraunhofer Institutes for Building Physics IBP and for Solar Energy Systems ISE have for the first time created a comprehensive model of the water flows in a solar cell factory with a production capacity of 5 gigawatts (5GWp) per year. Using this model as basis, they tested the introduction of two different strategies for circular water use. The results show that a reduction of up to 79 percent in the water consumption and up to 84 percent in the wastewater is already technically possible with today's production technologies. This would mean that the construction of new solar cell factories in locations with less water availability are also feasible. The study is freely accessible in the latest issue of Solar Energy.

The Fraunhofer Institute for Solar Energy Systems ISE is the first European research institute to switch to large-area M10 silicon wafers. A TOPCon solar cell immediately achieved a very good efficiency of 24.0 percent. This result was presented for the first time at the 20th Photovoltaic Technology Advisory Board Meeting of Fraunhofer ISE.