First Solar, Inc. (Tempe, Arizona) plans to invest approximately $270M in a dedicated research and development (R&D) innovation centre in Perrysburg, Ohio. The new facility is believed to be the first of its scale in the United States and is expected to accelerate American leadership in the development and production of advanced thin film photovoltaics (PV).
Glass facades characterise modern architecture. While solar radiation serves to support heating in winter, the building interior heats up in summer and requires active cooling. Smart windows can regulate the solar radiation according to the weather situation – a forward-looking solution in times of energy saving. Fraunhofer FEP (Dresden, Germany) has now succeeded in producing the world's first thermochromic layer on ultra-thin glass in a roll-to-roll process. These results will make mechanical blinds superfluous in the future and at the same time reduce the cooling and heating energy requirements of a building.
The Sunrise project by Epishine (Linköping, Sweden) is the first of its kind to demonstrate an efficient production of innovative indoor solar cells for IoT applications. The Sunrise project has now received a grant of SEK 25 million from the EU's LIFE fund, which will contribute to developing Epishine's production of indoor solar cells further.
