Financial - Page 11

Five Wrocław University of Science and Technology researchers have been awarded over than 12 million PLN (around USD$3.2 million) for research projects under the Maestro and Sonata Bis competitions organized by the National Centre for Science. Among the research area are perovskites, active enzymes, and artificial intelligence.

Targeting experienced scientists, Maestro is a competition for research projects aimed at carrying out pioneering, and also interdisciplinary, research that is important for the development of science and reaching beyond the current state of knowledge, which may result in scientific discoveries.

The U.S. Air Force recently awarded the University of Toledo (UToledo) $12.5 million to develop photovoltaic energy sheets that would live in space and harvest solar energy to transmit power wirelessly to Earth-based receivers or to other orbital or aerial instrumentation, such as communications satellites.

UToledo physicists will develop flexible solar cell sheets, each roughly the size of a piece of paper, that can be assembled and interconnected into much larger structures. The team will focus on tandem architectures and work with a variety of combinations of solar cells, perovskites included.

Power Roll, a developer of low-cost and lightweight flexible film for energy generation and storage, recently reported raising £3 million (around USD$4.16 million), which joins a previous raise and takes total investment in the firm to £5.8 million (over USD$8 million) over two funding rounds completed in the last six months.

Power Roll is working with a perovskite solar ink, and has already achieved 11% efficiency, with a roadmap to bring this to 20%. Power Roll also states that its substrate is compatible with any photo absorbing ink.

A new EU project called "CITYSOLAR" aims to revolutionize the market for transparent solar cells for windows by combining two photovoltaic (PV) technologies in a tandem configuration. The project has received 3,779,242 EUR in support from the H2020 framework programme. Transparent solar cells for windows have been known for several years, but are still not sufficiently efficient - which is what the new project will attempt to change.

'We develop new innovative concepts within light management and solar module integration that are specifically targeted at new promising organic and hybrid thin film PV technologies, and by that we go significantly beyond state-of-the-art in terms of efficiency for transparent photovoltaics. It's a revolutionary new concept,' says Professor Aldo di Carlo, Cnr-Ism, who is coordinator of the new project and is thrilled about the support of "CITYSOLAR" from the H2020 framework.

Venture Kick, a private consortium that aims to push forward young entrepreneurs with high-potential business ideas, has selected Perovskia, a nascent perovskite-based solar cells company, to receive CHF40,000 (around USD$45,170).

Perovskia is a young startup that has developed a digital printing technology to fabricate efficient and stable perovskite solar cells with custom design capability. The fabrication techniques they developed are reportedly highly efficient and flexible, which could reduce the production cost considerably, even for customized items. The team plans to use its technology to cater to the diverse needs of Internet of Things, electronic goods, sensors, and ultimately designer solar tiles industries.

U.S -based developer of all-perovskite tandem solar cells, Swift Solar, recently announced that it secured more than $8 million in Series Seed 2 funding, with an additional $1.5 million expected to close soon. Altogether, the company has raised more than $16 million in equity financing to date.

The financing round was led by GitLab CEO Sid Sijbrandij and cryptocurrency player James Fickel. Proceeds will be used to expand R&D, develop prototypes and add staff.

The EPFL launched a new project, supported by the Valais State Government with 5 million Swiss Francs, to realize a "demonstrator project" at EPFL-Sion Campus Energypolis.

Sized at the canton or district level, these installations will enable the testing of technologies developed in the laboratories of EPFL Valais-Wallis in real conditions, with the collaboration of local partners and the HES-SO Valais-Wallis.

The Department of Science and Technology (DST), under India's Ministry of Science & Technology, has announced the list of solar and storage projects to be carried out by Indian and Israeli researchers with joint funding by the two nations. The project duration will be two years.

Solar projects selected for joint funding include novel electron and hole transport materials for perovskite solar cells by CSIR Indian Institute of Chemical Technology Hyderabad and The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, and mixed-dimensional and hybrid bilayered perovskites for high-stability and high-efficiency photovoltaic devices by CSIR National Institute for Interdisciplinary Science and Technology, Kerala, and Technion Israel Institute of Technology.

The U.S government's Solar Energy Technologies Office (SETO) Fiscal Year 2020 funding program has been released, supporting projects that will improve the affordability, reliability, and value of solar technologies on the U.S. grid and tackle emerging challenges in the solar industry.

This program funds projects that advance early-stage photovoltaic (PV), concentrating solar-thermal power (CSP), and systems integration technologies, and reduce the non-hardware costs associated with installing solar energy systems. Two perovskite-related projects have been included in this program.

Sweden-based perovskite-based PV start-up Evolar has announced an investment from Norwegian renewables investor Magnora as it targets rapid commercialization of its technology.

Evolar has been researching the development of perovskites in solar cells, and Evolar now intends to help commercialize the technology. Evolar's approach is to add a perovskite-based thin-film layer to cells to create a tandem solar cell, which the company said is expected to increase module efficiency by five percentage points.