Growing high-efficiency coloured photo voltaic panels for buildings – Uplaza

The vitality transition in Germany, Europe, and internationally is driving strong demand for photo voltaic panels. Alongside excessive vitality yields, aesthetics and acceptance are additionally more and more vital elements. To accommodate these traits, a crew of researchers from the Fraunhofer Institute for Photo voltaic Power Programs ISE has developed an modern photo voltaic facade component that may be integrated right into a constructing’s exterior virtually invisibly and with none important lack of effectivity.

With the event of MorphoColor coating know-how, specialists have made an vital contribution to the enlargement of built-in photovoltaic methods in Germany. For this groundbreaking mission, they are going to be offered with the Joseph von Fraunhofer Prize for 2024.

Photovoltaic methods will not be a well-liked design characteristic amongst architects and constructing house owners. Researchers Dr. Oliver Höhn, Dr. Thomas Kroyer and Andreas Wessels from Fraunhofer ISE, primarily based in Freiburg, got down to change that by growing aesthetically pleasing coloured photo voltaic panels that characteristic angularly steady, saturated colour with minimal lack of effectivity, to allow them to be built-in virtually invisibly into constructing exteriors.

Impressed by morpho butterflies

There are two essential elements for photo voltaic panels for building-integrated photovoltaic use. First, they should behave optically like a standard coloured component, and second, they need to nonetheless be capable to generate as a lot energy as doable. To satisfy this problem, the researchers seemed to nature for inspiration—and located it in morpho butterflies.

“The 3D photonic structures on a morpho butterfly’s wings allow for an intensive, angularly stable colored impression thanks to a fundamentally low-loss interference effect,” explains Kroyer. Following this organic mannequin, the specialists from Fraunhofer ISE succeeded in utilizing a vacuum course of to use an analogous floor construction to the again of the glass protecting their photo voltaic panels. Relying on the tremendous construction, this methodology can be utilized to supply glass coverings in numerous colours.

The coating system for coloured photo voltaic panels has now surpassed the organic mannequin by way of its properties. “Independent measurements confirm that the colored solar panels with MorphoColor coatings can achieve about 95 percent of the power of a comparable uncoated panel,” Wessels explains. That makes MorphoColor know-how far superior to all different comparable applied sciences accessible in the marketplace.

MorphoColor know-how: A flexible plug-in answer with potential for the longer term

The plug-in answer can be utilized with all normal commercially accessible photo voltaic applied sciences in addition to these foreseeable sooner or later, plus it may be manufactured industrially at low price. Cell and panel applied sciences with a uniform look are an particularly good match. These embody rear contact photo voltaic cells and the shingle matrix know-how additionally developed at Fraunhofer ISE—an meeting methodology harking back to a brick wall.

“In shingle matrix technology, the conductive adhesive bonding of the solar cells eliminates the need for reflective metallic connectors between the cells, which leads to a homogeneous appearance. That means the solar cell technology remains completely invisible behind the colored layer. And that in turn enables aesthetically pleasing and complete visual integration into facades or roofs,” Höhn explains.

The MorphoColor trademark is already registered within the EU, Switzerland, China, the USA, Japan, and South Korea. A license was granted in 2023 to Switzerland-based Megasol Energie AG, a number one European producer of photo voltaic panels and in-roof and facade set up methods that’s at present establishing the MorphoColor know-how in the marketplace.

Integration of photo voltaic panels into automobiles is one other promising subject of improvement. Fraunhofer ISE offered glass automobile roofs and hoods with built-in MorphoColor photo voltaic panels on the IAA automotive commerce present. The entire main German automobile producers confirmed nice curiosity within the new know-how.