News 2022

The project “Dispatchable concentrated Solar-to-X energy solution for high penetration of renewable energy (SOLARX)" ,funded by the Horizon Europe program, was launched on November 1, 2022. The main objective of the 3-year project with a total budget of 3 million euros is to demonstrate at laboratory scale the technical, economic and social relevance of the efficient synergic production of heat, electricity and hydrogen from the solar resource in a single facility. The consortium is composed of companies, technological centers, industrial partners and universities: HyGear (Netherlands), Acciona Industrial (Spain), EMD International (Denmark), Fraunhofer Institute for Solar Energy Systems ISE (Germany), Danmarks Tekniske Universitet (Denmark), Laboratoire Nanotechnologies et Nanosystèmes de la Université de Sherbrooke (CNRS, France/Canada) and accelopment Schweiz AG (Switzerland).

Sixty photovoltaic (PV) solar modules with a green MorphoColor® structural layer have recently been added to the façade of the Center for Highly Efficient Solar Cells at the Fraunhofer Institute for Solar Energy Systems ISE in Freiburg. The pilot project for building-integrated photovoltaics (BIPV) will supply the research institute with approximately 11 megawatt hours of solar electricity per year. The MorphoColor® technology developed by the research institute makes it possible to color the glass of the PV modules, while maintaining at least 90 percent of the module efficiency. The integrated photovoltaic system can either set colored accents on the building façade, as in this example, or visually blend into the building, for example, as brick red-colored PV modules on the roof.

Today the German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier announced the winner of the German Future Prize 2022 at a festive ceremony in Berlin. The nominated team made up of Thomas Speidel, CEO of the listed ADS-TEC Energy plc (NASDAQ: ADSE) and managing partner of the ADS-TEC Group, Dr. Thorsten Ochs, Chief Technology Officer of ADS-TEC Energy, and Dr. Stefan Reichert, group leader of Power Converters at the Fraunhofer Institute for Solar Energy Systems ISE, was among the top three finalists. The team was nominated for the development of a storage-based ultra-fast charging system, called “ChargeBox”. This year’s winner of the German Future Prize was Zeiss Microscopy GmbH with their 3D microscope to study living cells.

The Energy and Environment Foundation (EEF), India, organized the “World Hydrogen Energy Summit 2022“ from October 16 to 17, 2022. Coinciding with the conference, the annual “EEF Global Excellence Awards“ is being presented to outstanding and distinguished energy personalities. Prof. Christopher Hebling, Director of the Business Division Hydrogen Technologies Fraunhofer ISE, has received the award in the category “Hydrogen Sector“.

Researchers from the Fraunhofer Institute for Solar Energy Systems ISE are contributing to the United Arab Emirates’ (UAE) National Hydrogen Strategy. The contract was commissioned by the UAE’s Ministry of Energy and Infrastructure (MOEI) to the service company GHD and to the Fraunhofer Cluster of Excellence Integrated Energy Systems CINES. CINES, to which ISE is also a member, combines the competencies of the institutes for applied energy research of the Fraunhofer Gesellschaft.

In Africa, up to 30 percent of agricultural or marine products such as fish spoil on their way to market due to a lack of refrigeration or preservation facilities. Not least, this is due to the lack of an electrical infrastructure in rural areas. In the SolCoolDry cooperative project, the Fraunhofer Institute for Solar Energy Systems ISE developed a system for solar-assisted ice production and solar drying of foodstuffs. The system has now been handed over to the local community in Mwazaro in southern Kenya.

Ammonia from green hydrogen is an energy carrier with high economic potential that can be used as a chemical feedstock, as marine fuel or for stationary power generation. In the future, it will be imported on a large scale from regions with high solar and wind resources. In the project "PICASO" (Process Intensification & Advanced Catalysis for Ammonia Sustainable Optimized process), the Fraunhofer Institute for Solar Energy Systems ISE, Ulm University and the Fukushima Renewable Energy Institute (FREA-AIST) are working on a novel power-to-ammonia (PtA) process for sustainable ammonia synthesis. The process could reduce CO2 emissions by 95 percent compared to the conventional process. The project, funded by the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research, started on August 1.

Floating photovoltaics, or FPV, can help to resolve land use conflicts arising due to the expansion of renewable energy in Germany. A research team from the Fraunhofer Institute for Solar Energy Systems ISE has now calculated the potential of photovoltaic generation on pit lakes at active mining sites in Baden-Württemberg. Such lakes are not suitable for recreational activities, tourism, nature conservation or landscape protection; however, they are, on the contrary, particularly suitable for floating photovoltaics. According to the recent study, FPV systems with a total rated power of 280 to 1,070 megawatts could be installed on artificial bodies of water within the state. This takes into account practical constraints and depends on the ecologically motivated upper limit for PV coverage on pit lakes.

Juan Francisco Martínez Sánchez, a researcher at the Fraunhofer Institute for Solar Energy Systems ISE, received the Gips-Schüle Young Scientist Award this week for combining concentrator PV technology with a conventional silicon photovoltaic (PV) module. The decisive innovation is that the hybrid PV module uses not only direct sunlight, which is concentrated by lenses onto miniature concentrator solar cells no bigger than several millimeters in size, but also diffuse, or scatttered, sunlight thanks to silicon solar cells. With this innovative concept, a bifacial PV module was able to achieve a power output of 350 watts per square meter for the first time worldwide.

The Fraunhofer Institute for Solar Energy Systems ISE is co-signatory of an open letter regarding the REPowerEU plan to European policy makers and the media. Internationally active energy storage system associations and companies as well as international research institutions demand higher speed in the deployment of electrical energy storage.