Innovations in solar technology - from creating solar skins that are more aesthetically pleasing for homeowners to smart solar water bottles and solar storage advancements by using bacteria (electroactive microbes) to store energy - the future of photovoltaics and concentrated solar power remains in a state innovation.
According to a March 2019 report from the Solar Energy Industries Association (SEIA), the US solar market is expected to double over the next five years. The same report notes that there are now 62.4 gigawatts of installed solar capacity in the US.
In Europe, Research and Markets reported that despite a drop in the solar market in 2016, the European solar PV industry recovered in 2017 adding 8.6 gigawatts of solar capacity and is expected to add 16.5 gigawatts by 2025.
Mattias Josephson, CEO of Epishine, a Swedish cleantech company, says his company has made several roll-to-roll process breakthroughs which he believes is key to the tipping point to printing organic photovoltaic (OPV) cells.
Josephson says a long-term goal for their solar cells are factories with manufacturing machines in the size and scale of newspaper presses where each machine can print solar cells on rolls equivalent to one nuclear reactor per month.
"This would accelerate the global shift from fossil fuels to green utility-scale energy plants. An ultra-light solar cell which eases transportation and makes areas such as deserts and even water - lakes, oceans, ponds - suitable places for solar energy," added Josephson.
"[..] If you add a scalable and cost-efficient manufacturing solution completely independent of both scarce, toxic and expensive raw-materials to the process, you get a picture of the breakthroughs we’ve made and think important," added Josephson.
Epishine is using organic electronics - conducting and semi-conducting hydro-carbon-molecules with no silicon or metal. "Our active layer is based on polymers, which is long hydro-carbon-chains. Organic electronics is an [..] interesting emerging technology where the first application you’ve seen on the market is organic light emitting diodes (OLED) where ‘O’ stands for organic electronics."
Epishine's thin, flexible and semi-transparent printed solar cells could be a part of building materials that generate electricity in structures.
Josephson believes that in several years, Epishine's solar cells viable, affordable building-integrated solar cells for a variety of building materials.
"With exponential global challenges - such as exponentially increased energy demand - we expose the environment and the climate to great risks," said Josephson. "In addition to healthier consumption and circular solutions, we need new energy systems that can scale quickly enough and incentives to switch to these."
"The best of both new energy systems and powerful incentive systems are probably found in new innovation - which is also developing exponentially. For example, innovation can be found in new materials like our solar cells and in blockchains for safe incentive solutions," adds Josephson.
Today, the company is harvesting light and produces light energy harvesting modules that use indoor lighting to create energy to support low power devices currently powered by batteries.
Epishine has a €2.8M grant from the Swedish Energy Agency, Knut & Alice Wallenberg, Vinnova, Climate-KIC and several other angel investors. They also have €1.6M ($1.3M) in funding from ALMI GreenTech Invest, Potential Invest, Lars Björk, Linköping University, Chalmers Ventures and a group of local business angels.
