Building PV project aims to shed light on future energy mix

9th March 2015

Heliatek GmbH

Barney Scott

0 0

Heliatek has announced that its partner, vTrium Energy, will be implementing the world's most powerful and Asia's largest BIOPV (Building Integrated Organic Photovoltaic) project. Heliatek's organic solar film, HeliaFilm, will be the core part of this installation in Singapore, which provides a test-bed platform for sustainable technologies.

This project is funded and supported by Jurong Town Corporation (JTC, Singapore) and SPRING (Standards, Productivity and Innovation Board, Singapore). The findings from this project will help to create a base for the future energy mix for Singapore.

HeliaFilm will be installed on 226m² with a peak power of more than 12kWp. Three different parts of JTCs buildings in Cleantech Park 1 and 2 and Seletar Aerospace walkway will be covered with solar films.

HeliaFilm will be implemented with various building materials: within and on glass, on steel and on curved polycarbonate. Several versions of HeliaFilm will be used: full power opaque, transparent with two different transparency levels (15% and 30 %), and different colours.

“The combination of several HeliaFilm versions and the application in different orientations on various materials makes this project very exciting for us,” stated Thibaud Le Séguillon, CEO, Heliatek. “In a relatively short period of time, we are going to get a comprehensive dataset about our solar films' performances in tropical climates. This real world test in a hot sunny climate, where solar is an obvious choice, will demonstrate th advantage of HeliaFilm technology over conventional silicon.” Conventional silicon becomes less efficient as the temperature rises, but HeliaFilm is not affected by increased temperatures.

“For Singapore, this project is an important milestone on its path towards a sustainable city development. As one of the most advanced countries in the Asian region, Singapore is again demonstrating its leading role in green urban development,” added Vijay Sirse, CEO, vTrium Energy. “BIOPV can provide a significant contribution to the future urban development of Singapore. We are looking forward working with Heliatek on this project to be a part of this future.”

The implementation will start in May 2015 and the project will run for at least 18 months. The independent monitoring of this pilot will be performed by the Solar Energy Research Institute of Singapore (SERIS).