News 2024

A study by the University of Göttingen and the Fraunhofer Institute for Solar Energy Systems ISE showed that the majority of farmers in Germany are open to agrivoltaics, the dual use of land for agricultural production and solar energy generation, and can imagine installing the technology on their farms. The research team conducted an online survey and analyzed the responses from 214 farmers. The results showed that 72.4 percent could imagine using agrivoltaics on their farm. The main motivations given were the additional source of income from self-generated electricity and the future-oriented development that agrivoltaics offers to the farm.

Electrolyzers make it possible to greatly expand the use of renewable energies by producing hydrogen, which can be used to store clean energy. In order to facilitate the high-volume production of competitive stacks for PEM electrolysis in the near future, researchers at the Fraunhofer Institute for Solar Energy Systems ISE are investigating scalable processes such as slot-die coating and screen printing for the production of catalyst layers for the membrane electrode assembly (MEA). They have now developed catalyst inks for both production processes that enable the production of catalyst layers with lower iridium loading and high throughput. This significantly reduces the material and manufacturing costs for PEM electrolyzers.

To ensure the stability of the distribution grid in critical situations, grid operators should be able to temporarily reduce the power of controllable consumers such as heat pumps and charging stations. The communication to enable this will operate via the so-called Controllable Local System (CLS) channel of the Smart Meter Gateway (SMGW). The joint research project "UtiliSpaces", funded by the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF), is addressing the implementation challenges in the practice. The Fraunhofer Institute for Energy Economics and Energy System Technology IEE is project coordinator. The role of the Fraunhofer Institute for Solar Energy Systems ISE in the project is to test hardware and software for complex system controls in its Digital Grid Lab.