Financial - Page 12

Oxford PV, currently involved in building a manufacturing facility in Brandenburg an der Havel for its silicon perovskite tandem solar cells (in which it is investing around €44 million), has received €8.8 million funding from the state Ministry of Economics in Potsdam for this project.

'I am delighted that Oxford Photovoltaics has brought the solar technology developed by the company itself to market maturity and that it will soon start with industrial series production here in Brandenburg,' said Brandenburg Minister for Economic Affairs Jörg Steinbach. 'The decision by Oxford PV to expand the production facility in Hohenstücke is a clear commitment to our community.'

University of Sydney Nano Institute will lead multi-institutional research into extending the lifetime of perovskite solar energy cells, in an effort to make them truly cost-effective.

The federal government's renewable energy agency, ARENA, has awarded AUD$2.5 million (around USD$1,791,000) in solar energy research funding to Professor Anita Ho-Baillie, the John Hooke Chair of Nanoscience at the University of Sydney Nano Institute. The funding is part of a national injection to support solar photovoltaic research.

Poland-based PSC developer Saule Technologies recently announced a partnership with Columbus Energy, the largest service provider on the market of photovoltaic installations in Poland.

As part of this partnership, Saule Technologies received a €10 Million investment from Columbus Energy.

University of North Texas professor Anupama Kaul has received a $474,000 grant from the Office of Naval Research under the Department of Defense to develop new perovskite-based solar cell technology.

Kaul, who directs the Nanoscale Materials and Devices Lab and the PACCAR Technology Institute, intends to utilize perovskite materials that are extremely efficient at absorbing incoming light. Many perovskites used in solar cell research are made with solutions, and yet, remarkably, the solution processed materials are still highly absorbing to incoming light. The main advantage of solution processing is that it greatly reduces manufacturing costs of solar cells compared to the sophisticated and expensive infrastructure needed to make them with crystalline materials.

South Korea's Ministry of Trade, Industry and Energy (MOTIE) recently released a new roadmap for the domestic solar module industry that puts a strong focus on solar applications.

According to the document, domestic solar manufacturers and research institutes expect tandem solar cell technology based on silicon and perovskite to be the most promising candidates for PV products of the next generation. The Korean semiconductor and display industries, according to the MOTIE, may play a decisive role in this transition by providing its expertise in silicon product and thin film development.

The U.S. Department of Energy (DoE) recently announced $20 million in funding to advance perovskite photovoltaic technologies. To be competitive in the marketplace, perovskite's long-term durability must be tested and verified, which is the aim of this funding opportunity through DOE's Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy (EERE).

'Perovskites are a promising solar technology that could help us reach the next level of innovative and efficient solar power,' said Deputy Secretary of Energy Mark W. Menezes. 'Our goal is to further advance this technology here in the United States. The research and development supported by this $20 million investment will help us better understand how perovskite solar cells, which can be manufactured quickly, can further this mission.'

Australia-based RRAM developer 4DS Memory announced that it has raised a total of $7.6 million AUD ($5.45 million USD) in two financing round. The 4DS memory cell is constructed using an advanced perovskite material, which has the same crystal structure as the inorganic compound calcium titanium oxide.

4DS Memory says that it will use the funds to further develop its Interface Switching ReRAM technology with imec and Western Digital's subsidiary, HGST.

Researchers at Swansea University, Imperial College London and the University of Oxford have launched a project to drive next-generation solar technology into new applications. The team has been awarded a £6 million Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) grant to advance organic and perovskite solar cells into applications that current solar technologies are not suitable for.

The promise of such next-gen PV could make it suitable for new applications that will be critical to advances such as:

• 5G, which requires ultra-lightweight sources of power for pseudo-satellites and high altitude unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs)
• The Internet of Things, for which sensors and computing devices are increasingly embedded into everyday objects
• Zero-carbon buildings and vehicles, which could use their roofs, walls and windows to generate power.

Saule Technologies recently announced a 4.35 Million Euro grant from the Polish National Centre for Research and Development (NCBR), to push forward the mass production of flexible perovskite solar modules for IoT applications.

Solar cell powered beacon

Saule Technologies has pioneered the manufacturing of flexible perovskite solar cells. These types of devices offer excellent energy harvesting capabilities, particularly interesting for applications where the presence of direct sunlight is not prevalent. Saule stated that perovskite-based solar cells are the fastest evolving solar technology to date, with their single junction record power conversion efficiency in the lab already achieving 25.2% under one sun condition. However, this performance can be significantly higher when perovskites are exposed to artificial light, which is critical for the IoT solutions.

The US National Science Foundation (NSF) awarded nTact with $708,000 project to develop a reliable, reproducible, and cost-effective upscaling of perovskite photovoltaic devices using an industry-proven slot-die coating technique. This process will ultimately be used to produce flexible and rigid, highly efficient perovskite solar cells.

This is the second stage of this Small Business Technology Transfer Project (STTR-II) that has three objectives: