The partners in a publicly-funded European research project announced details of the multinational, multidisciplinary program, ‘Energy for a Green Society’ (ERG). This three-year ENIAC (European Nanoelectronics Initiative Advisory Council) project aims to achieve substantial advances in the solar energy supply chain, from sustainable harvesting to smart distribution.

SolarPrint is one of the partners in the project, which is being coordinated by STMicroelectronics.

The need for exponential growth in solar energy production, as required by Europe’s 2020 climate targets and general energy policies, creates formidable technological challenges. The ERG program sets to address these requirements by improving the efficiency of solar cells, devising innovative harvesting techniques, reducing power-conversion losses, and enhancing energy-management strategies.

In the first stage, European researchers will focus on the design and development of innovative solar cells, exploring novel architectures, approaches and materials. One of the program’s objectives is to demonstrate commercially viable applications of printable dye-sensitized solar cells that represent a promising low-cost alternative to silicon solutions.

In the next phase, the project partners will seek ways to optimize the use of energy generated by the photovoltaic systems, concentrating on power-management electronics for silicon cell panels and micro-electro-mechanical systems for concentrated photovoltaic cells. Techniques will be explored that track the maximum power point to boost output from solar arrays and improve power-conversion efficiency at the module and segment levels.

ERG will also generate behavioral models for individual components of the smart grid that enable the development of optimal energy-dispatching and battery-charging algorithms based on inputs from wireless sensor nodes distributed across the network. Innovative solutions will be devised that optimize local smart grids in terms of power management and co-generation, power consumption and overall efficiency, with real-time energy metering and billing control.

“This broad initiative sets to contribute to the establishment of a solid electronics design base for Europe and help create a set of technology standards for the solar energy sector”, said the project coordinator Dr. Francesco Gennaro, IMS Systems Lab & TM Power Conversion staff engineer, STMicroelectronics. “Our goal is to achieve improvements along the whole supply chain, pushing the solar-cell efficiency towards 25%, reducing power conversion losses by 20%, and exceeding 90% efficiency for the overall grid.”

The ‘Energy for a Green Society’ project is organized into a number of work packages, spanning a total duration of 36 months. The total cost of the project is €25.7 million, partially funded through a combination of European and national grants, under the rule of ENIAC-JU 2010.

The project partners are:
• Applied Materials Italia
• Boschman Technologies
• Chemnitz University of Technology
• Compel Electronics
• Enecsys
• Fraunhofer Gesellschaft
• Infineon Technologies
• Italian University NanoElectronics Consortium (IUNET)
• LEITAT
• National Research Council (CNR)
• NXP Semiconductors, the Netherlands
• ON Semiconductor Belgium
• Politecnico di Torino
• POWERTEC
• RWTH Aachen University
• Sincrotrone Trieste
• Slovak University of Technology Bratislava
• SMA Solar Technology
• SolarPrint
• STMicroelectronics, Italy – project coordinator
• Telefunken Semiconductors
• Tyndall National Institute, University College Cork
• University of Bologna
• University of Calabria
• University of Catania
• University of Sheffield