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The building integrated photovoltaics sector can benefit from innovations in construction and solar energy alike, even moreso when the two are in sync. In the PVadapt project, combined innovations in modular construction and modular photovoltaics will lead to the creation of an adaptable and multifunctional BIPV system of substantially lower cost than conventional solutions. A flexible and low cost production of photovoltaics in automated processes will be employed to produce PV modules as well as elements with integrated heat pipe based heat recovery. These active energy components will be combined with passive and sustainable components with structural, mechanical, thermal and other functions to produce prefabricated BIPV modules. Prefabrication will be the key to achieving cost reductions, as well as guaranteeing quick installation with low disruption. The project will also employ a sustainable by design philosophy with all the parts of the system being recyclable/ reusable and waste based raw material supply chains will be established. A Smart Envelope System featuring grid connectivity, load prediction and shifting and intelligent energy management systems with predictive algorithms will be integrated in the PVadapt turn key BIPV system. To convincingly demonstrate the PVadapt solutions, 7 buildings of various typologies (residential, commercial, 2 offices, and 3 service stations in Spain, Greece and Austria) will have the technology installed and one new 288m2 floor space construction will be built in Portugal with a total of 464kW installed. The LCOE values will be below 2ct/kWh and the cost of the BIPV module will be below 200 euros per m2 and payback below 10 years. In these sites, the PVadapt technologies will be installed in flat and pitched roofs, as wall replacements and facades and shaders, demonstrating the holistic approach to BIPVs, improving their entire life cycle.

This proposal will develop new transparent p-type semiconductors that will make dye-sensitized solar cells (DSC) a vastly more efficient and a realistic prospect for carbon-free energy generation worldwide. Two key challenges will be addressed: (1) a means of converting NIR radiation to increase the amount of sunlight utilised from 35% to over 70%; (2) a means of storing the energy. Almost all the research in the field is based on dye or “perovskite” sensitized TiO2 (n-type) solar cells, which are limited by their poor spectral response in the red-NIR. pTYPE approaches the problem differently: tandem DSCs will be developed which combine a n-type and a p-type DSC in a single p/n device. This increases the theoretical efficiency from 33% to 43% by extending the spectral response without sacrificing the voltage. The device will be modified with catalysts to convert H2O or CO2 and sunlight into fuel without using sacrificial reagents that limit the efficiency of current systems. An efficient tandem DSC has not yet been developed because p-type DSCs are much less efficient than n-type cells. As an independent Royal Society Dorothy Hodgkin fellow I increased the photocurrent by developing new dyes. This project will exploit this breakthrough by increasing the voltage, which is currently limited by the NiO semiconductor conventionally used. I will rapidly synthesise libraries of alternative p-type semiconductors; select promising candidates based on key criteria which can be measured on a single sample within minutes: transparency and dye adsorption (for high light harvesting efficiency by the dye), conductivity (for high charge collection efficiency) and valence band potential (for high voltage); assemble the new materials in tandem DSCs. As one of the few researchers experienced in preparing, characterising and optimising each aspect of this photoelectrochemical system, I aim to match the efficiency from TiO2 with p-type DSCs to obtain tandem efficiencies above 20%.

Realising an accelerated expansion of renewable energy will require a switch from centralised to decentralised energy production and greater social participation, together known as energy democracy. The increase in energy democracy and social equity will be an essential part of the clean energy transition. A transition that could represent one of the most fundamental social, economic and technical changes in modern history. The most common businesses associated with social innovation in the renewable energy sector are Cooperatives, Aggregators and Crowdfunding platforms. These businesses facilitate consumers to take a more active role in the electricity system. Achieving sustained growth in energy democracy requires a better understanding of support structures for successful social innovation across technical, legal and economic systems. SocialRES aims to devise more effective ways of increasing social innovation leading to greater social acceptability as well as more durable governance arrangements and socioeconomic benefits. Through research excellence and co-creation of knowledge with relevant stakeholders, SocialRES will develop socially innovative and inclusive strategies for the energy system of the future. SocialRES will supplement the existing fragmented data on social innovations with new understandings from businesses, end-users and stakeholders to provide a comprehensive evidence base for policy design. The project will employ innovative techniques such as a Peer to Peer (P2P) crowd-investing for renewable energy sources (RES) projects, P2P lending and P2P virtual RES energy aggregator platform. The SocialRES team combines partners from a range of disciplines together with industry expertise to develop a comprehensive understanding of the strengths and limitations of the current renewable energy system to foster social innovation and to shape a roadmap for a future, more innovative and equitable system.

DROP-IT proposes combining optoelectronics and photonics in a single flexible drop-on demand inkjet technology platform by means of exploiting the enormous potential of lead-free perovskite (LFP) materials. Specifically, novel crystalline structures beyond conventional ABX3 LFP (double-perovskites and rudorffites) will be computationally screened and chemically synthesized with superior properties as LFPs proposed in the literature. A(Sn-Ge)X3 (A=organic,Cs; X=Cl,Br,I) materials will be considered for initial benchmark devices. The future of DROP-IT technology is envisioned at long-term in the fields of photovoltaics, lighting and printed integrated photonics. This will be possible by developing highly innovative fabrication routes (inkjet printing towards Roll-to-Roll) of LFP pioneering materials (in bulk and nanoscale) by low-cost, high throughput, sustainable, large-scale fabrication techniques on flexible substrates (PET, f.e.) to revolutionize future power, lighting and communication systems. DROP-IT major novelty relies on the innovative use of newly synthesized LFPs in combination with the use of affordable, mask-less, drop on demand inkjet printing onto flexible substrates. The targeted breakthroughs towards the long-term vision of our technology will be based on the following challenges: (1) Theoretical screening of different LFP compound families and chemical synthesis of most suitable ones in the form of nanocrystals and polycrystalline thin films, (2) Formulation of specific and suitable inks of these materials for (3) Inkjet printing of thin films on flexible substrates and (4) Development of stable optoelectronic and photonic devices (solar cells with 12-15% and LEDs with 14-18% efficiencies, amplifiers-lasers with low threshold) as proofs-of-concept for a future technology based on new inorganic LFPs and charge transport layers. DROP-IT is supported by a strong and interdisciplinary consortium with complementary expertise to achieve these objectives.

Scenarios have forecasted a long lasting amplification with PV electricity becoming the cheapest electricity source in many regions with costs in the range of 4 to 6 c€/kWh for EU by 2024, while 2.2 c€/kWh has been achieved for a 800 MW PV plant planned in Abu Dhabi for 2019. The PV market will continue to expand in the coming years with more than a doubling in the production capacity expected for 2024. At the same time investment in production capacities is foreseen to keep growing hence maintaining the sector highly competitive. For the European PV industry, which is struggling to survive after years of massive investments in China and south-east Asia, the growth of the market represents a chance to come back as a prime player on high-efficiency premium technologies. This is the positioning of GOPV to develop highly competitive technologies for the PV utility market and strong synergies between European players. The project will accelerate reduction of electricity cost implementing advanced PV features and creating synergies across 5 topic areas: Light Management; Energy Efficiency; Material Efficiency; System Reliability; and System configuration and O&M. Ultimately, it will set up an integrated 500 kW PV system to demonstrate a competitive electricity cost of 0.02 €/kWh for irradiation levels of 1900 kWh/m²/year GHI in Southern Europe. The levelised cost of electricity (LCOE) will hence be reduced by 50% (currently 0,04 €/kWh) and the energy payback time reduced by 40%, both in respect to actual standard solution and to PERC best in class mono-facial solution. GOPV project will deliver a 35 years lifetime for the PV string instead of 25 years standards. Beyond GOPV, the global turnover for the six industrial partners exploiting the results of the project will be close to 48 M€ (2022) and will reach 680 M€ in 2027 (x 14 compare to 2020) with an expectation of creating more than 2000 jobs on the 2022-27 period.

In the next 10 years, European wind power capacity will double. To maximize energy output & turbine efficiency, one of the most promising innovations is high altitude wind power plants. By building taller towers, we can exploit up to 2x stronger winds, lowering the cost of energy. Modvion is a wood construction engineering company founded in 2016. Our mission is to develop & bring to market the next generation of cost-efficient tall towers for wind turbines in engineered wood – nature's carbon fibre. Modvion’s team grew constantly, with highly specialized people joining the team. This led to our first patent and, currently, another pending patent. We bring to market the first ever modular wind turbine tower made from laminated wood (LVL). Using Modvion technology, towers can be built, with a larger diameter base. This increases its strength, thus leading to taller & stronger towers. By using engineered wood such as LVL, we were able to develop a structure with 55% more strength than steel per weight. Modv

The Portuguese Government has approved the Industrial Strategy for Ocean Renewable Energies (EI-ERO) with the aim of developing the country’s offshore wind potential. According to EI-ERO, offshore renewable energies have the potential to supply 25% of the electricity consumed annually in Portugal and create a new export chain in these new technologies. The government envisages that potential exports in this field could increase up to ten times the current employment in the active sectors, with the greatest potential for exports seen in the development of the floating wind technology. The overall objective of TWIND is to create a network of excellence that will dynamize a pool of specialized research professionals and trainers in the domain of offshore wind energy to support an emerging industry in Portugal in a field with a very strong anticipated growth and no dedicated existing training curriculum. WavEC will be the pivot research institution of the low performing Member State (Portugal) coordinating efforts with internationally-leading counterparts at the EU level (Spain, UK and The Netherlands) and enhancing its excellence and innovation capacity through the exchange of knowledge with these leading research organizations. The combining capabilities of partners will open the grounds to exploit existing research results and invest in developing more knowledge. These objectives will be fulfilled through a set of strategic activities well-structured throughout the project including specific training programmes on thematic topics, short-term scientific meetings, long-term staff visits, networking meetings, attendance to relevant conferences in the field, knowledge transfer workshops with stakeholders and an annual event. The networking activities and exchange of knowledge will stimulate research activities and highly qualified services that impact the economy and the society, thus benefitting not only WavEC and the partner organisations, but in general Portugal.

Solar energy reaching Earth is ubiquitous and unlimited. However, current solar technologies in the market converting light directly to electricity theoretically can harvest only 33% of this energy. Stacking several solar cells with appropriate optical properties, power conversion efficiency (PCE) can be almost doubled. Albeit, current multiple junction (MJ) solar cells are very expensive and unaffordable for large scale applications. Combination of well-established thin film solar technologies is a promising strategy for fabrication of high-efficiency and cost-effective MJ solar cells. Dual junction solar cells combining Si and wide bandgap thin films are extensively studied. Infrared (IR) part of solar spectrum is not utilized by such dual junction. PCE can be boosted up to 49% by adding IR solar cell. However, there are only few materials with suitable bandgap for IR solar cells, and they contain toxic chemical elements and/or are expensive to synthesize. Evidently, there is an urgent need to explore novel materials for IR solar cells which is the main goal of the current Marie Skłodowska-Curie project. Chalcogenide-perovskites (CP) is an emerging class of materials that has been highly regarded for optoelectronic application. However, little experimental evidence of photovoltaic (PV) properties has been demonstrated. This project aims to unravel the potential of CP materials for IR PV. First bulk material will be synthesized and characterized to filter out CPs with 0.7 eV bandgap. Then, CP thin films will be fabricated and tested to evaluate potential for PV. The researcher dr. Rokas Kondrotas will be returning after a two-year post-doc in China. He will be contracted with Fiziniu ir Technologijos Mokslu Centras (FTMC) and supervised by prof. Arūnas Krotkus. Through the course of the project, applicant will adopt new competence, research and academic skills, and strengthen his position as the leading scientist in the newly emerging PV group.

Organic photo-detecting devices (OPDs) and solar cells (OSCs) both rely on thin films containing blends of electron donors and acceptors, sandwiched between transmissive and reflective electrodes. This project aims to significantly enhance the performance of such devices, by understanding and manipulating resonant optical cavity effects implemented in this simple device architecture. By tuning the cavity resonance wavelength within the optical gap of both donor and acceptor, weak absorption of intermolecular charge transfer (CT) states is significantly enhanced, opening up opportunities to extend the absorption window to longer wavelengths. Using recently reported new non-fullerene acceptors, we will fabricate and characterize wavelength selective resonant cavity enhanced OPDs with high external quantum efficiencies and short response times, operating at longer wavelengths (>1200 nm) than the current state-of-the-art OPDs. To improve OSC performance, we will tune the cavity resonance wavelength to the optical absorption peak wavelength of either the strongly absorbing donor or acceptor. This results in strong light-matter effects causing a redshift of the absorption onset. This approach will be exploited to overcome the rather large voltage losses and optical absorption losses in state-of-the-art OSC devices.

HydroFlex aims to increase the value of hydro power through increased Flexibility. The commitment to cut greenhouse gas emissions under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change has been an important contributor to the increasing share of renewables in the European energy system. Variable renewable energy sources such as wind and solar, as well as increased end-user flexibility and a market-oriented operation of power plants, results in larger fluctuations in the power system. Hydro power, due to its quick response and storage capability represents an important asset for grid balancing. HydroFlex aims to make hydro power available in a time as short as possible by performing well-focused research and innovation actions on the key bottlenecks of hydro power plants that restricts their flexibility. The project will start off by identifying the operating conditions of hydro power plants in the future energy system. Research will be focused on the flexibility of Francis turbines, the most common turbine type in Europe, and the configuration of synchronous generators and frequency converters that allow for variable speed operation. Variable speed operation increases the operating range of the turbines, reduces the fatigue loads, and allow for higher ramping rates and start-stop-cycles reaching up to 30 times per day. HydroFlex also addresses methods to mitigate the negative effects on downstream water courses that may result from higher flexibility of hydro power plants, by developing and testing a technology for active underground storage of water. To promote the research results to the hydro power industry, the scientific community and the public, the results will be presented in workshops, conferences, scientific journals, newspapers and various social media.