New solar hub could help the UK lead the BIPV products market

Sara Ver-Bruggen - 24 May 2010

A project bid to coordinate academic research and industrial interest in advanced low-cost solar cells could make the UK a world leader in building-integrated photovoltaic (BIPV) materials and technology.

The goal of Sustainable Product Engineering Centre for Innovative Functional Industrial Coatings (SPECIFIC) is the commercialisation of energy-generating products for the built environment, to achieve the equivalent of 10.8GW electricity by 2020, or one third of the 2020 target where 15% of energy must come from renewables.

Products will be developed to meet both new build and retrofit demand and will comprise mainly of roofing steel and window glass, pre-coated with advanced materials to convert light to energy.

SPECIFIC, which is bidding for up to £12 million (€14 million) in financing from sources including the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC), the Technology Strategy Board (TSB) and the Welsh Assembly, will link up several universities with complementary research interests to achieve its goals.

Swansea University will operate the centre, building on its history of applied research into coatings for protecting construction steel and exploiting its other relevant R&D centres including the Welsh Centre for Printing and Coating.

Partners

The other academic partners are Imperial College London, which has a photochemistry group that includes work on dye cells and organic solar cell materials; Bath and Bangor universities for their respective green chemistry work; Glyndwr CSER, which has focused research on hybrid solar cell devices and scaling up of PV production; the Welsh School of Architecture; Manchester University for its work on corrosion inhibitors; and Sheffield Hallam University.

The project will also use the pilot production equipment and tools at the Printed Electronics Centre (PETEC). The two industrial partners are Corus Steel, which through its Corus Colors business is working closely with Swansea and commercial materials supplier Dyesol to develop a process for industrialising the production of roofing steel coated with solar cells; and Pilkington Glass, which supplies 90% of the UK's constructional glazing demand. BASF, Beckers and Akzo Nobel will contribute materials coating and expertise.

According to professor David Worsley at Swansea University: 'Functionalising the building envelope so that it can generate its own energy is going to be crucial to meeting future carbon reduction targets, along with other renewables such as wind power. All these universities have something significant to contribute to this challenge, but we need to be able to coordinate this effectively, working closely with industrial partners.' Between them the universities boast 36 relevant patents ranging from metal substrate mounted, flexible, dye-sensitised solar cells, to high-efficiency hybrid cells for microgeneration.

Worsley has been in contact with the National Grid in the UK, which will potentially support early adoption of so-called macro-scale microgeneration systems through regional distribution companies.

The project could also place the UK at the forefront of advances to industrialise building-integrated solar cell technologies and products. Corus Steel's project is already the focus of international interest and visits from Asia, including Japan and Korea, Europe and the US.

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