Lower-income communities across the United States have long been much slower to adopt solar power than their affluent neighbors, even when local and federal agencies offer tax breaks and other financial incentives.But, commercial and industrial rooftops, such as those atop retail buildings and factories, offer a big opportunity to reduce what researchers call the “solar equity gap,” according to <a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/s41560-024-01485-y" data-extlink="" target="_blank">a new study</a>, published in Nature Energy and led by researchers at Stanford University.“The solar equity gap is a serious problem in disadvantaged communities, in part because of income inequalities, but also because residential solar isn’t usually practical for people who don’t own their homes,” said <a href="https://profiles.stanford.edu/ram-rajagopal" data-extlink="" target="_blank">Ram Rajagopal</a>, senior author of the study and associate professor of <a href="https://cee.stanford.edu/" data-extlink="" target="_blank">civil and environmental engineering</a> and of <a href="https://ee.stanford.edu/" data-extlink="" target="_blank">electrical engineering</a> at Stanford. “This new study shows that commercial and industrial properties have the capacity to host solar resources to fill in part of that gap.”<h2>Untapped resources</h2>First, the bad news. The researchers found that non-residential rooftops generate 38% less electricity in disadvantaged communities than in wealthier ones. That gap, which is mainly because of lower deployment in poorer areas, has widened over the past two decades. Nevertheless, this gap is significantly lower than that of residential solar in these neighborhoods.The good news, the researchers say, is that non-residential buildings have large unused capacity to produce solar power for their own benefit and to supply the communities around them. In low-income communities, commercial enterprises may be more responsive to government incentives for solar power than households are. <a href="https://engineering.stanford.edu/magazine/solar-panels-are-largely-confined-wealthy-americans" target="_blank">An earlier study</a> by the same researchers found that residential customers in disadvantaged communities, who may have fewer financial resources and often don’t own their homes, show less response to tax breaks and other financial inducements.“Using Stanford’s <a href="https://deepsolar.web.app/" data-extlink="" target="_blank">DeepSolar</a> database, we estimated that solar arrays on non-residential buildings could meet more than a fifth of annual residential electricity demand in almost two-thirds of disadvantaged communities,” said <a href="https://de.linkedin.com/in/moritz-wussow-35082453?original_referer=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.google.com%2F" data-extlink="" target="_blank">Moritz Wussow</a>, the study’s lead author.“Also, the raw cost of that power would be less in many communities than the residential rates that local electric utilities charge,” said Wussow, who was a visiting student researcher in Rajagopal’s lab group in 2022 and 2023.To quantify the distribution of non-residential solar power installations, the researchers used satellite images and artificial intelligence to identify the number and size of rooftop solar arrays in 72,739 census tracts across the United States. About one-third of those tracts are deemed disadvantaged by the U.S. government.The team tracked non-residential solar deployment as well as the amount of unused rooftops that would be good candidates for solar installation from 2006 through 2016 and then again for 2022. They then calculated the average annual cost of producing solar electricity in each area, based on the amount of local sun exposure and other variables. The costs ranged from about 6.4 cents per kilowatt-hour in sun-drenched New Mexico to almost 11 cents in Alaska. But those costs were lower than residential electricity rates in many of those areas – even in many northern states.<a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/chad-zanocco-582a031a" data-extlink="" target="_blank">Chad Zanocco</a>, a co-author of the new study and a postdoctoral fellow in civil and environmental engineering, noted that getting the power to residential areas would include other costs, such as battery storage and the construction of microgrids.“We estimate that battery storage would increase total system costs by about 50%, but even that would be practical in almost two-thirds of the disadvantaged communities we studied,” Zanocco said.<h2>Economies of scale</h2>If commercial and industrial solar arrays can feed their surplus electricity into local power grids, the researchers write, lower-income residents could gain access through community subscriptions rather than by building their own rooftop panels. Commercial and industrial sites also offer greater economies of scale, compared to individual household solar panels. Another big advantage is that non-residential power customers could also be highly sensitive to tax incentives and other government inducements, leading to greater adoption.Further lowering barriers, the researchers noted, is the Inflation Reduction Act of 2022 which has provided billions of dollars for states and local communities for clean-energy infrastructure. That money has already reduced the cost of new microgrids.“Beyond reducing carbon emissions and slowing climate change, increased access to solar power would offer tangible local benefits to lower-income communities,” said <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/zhecheng-wang-96287b132/" data-extlink="" target="_blank">Zhecheng Wang</a>, a co-author and a postdoctoral fellow at Stanford’s Institute for Human-Centered Artificial Intelligence.“This would promote local clean and low-cost energy generation, which would also increase the resilience from outages and reduce the pollution caused by fossil fuel power plants – many of which are located in low-income areas.”Additional Stanford co-authors on the paper are:&nbsp;<a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/rajanieprabha" data-extlink="" target="_blank">Rajanie Prabha</a>, a PhD student in Civil &amp; Environmental Engineering;&nbsp;<a href="https://profiles.stanford.edu/june-flora" data-extlink="" target="_blank">June Flora</a>, a senior research scholar in Civil &amp; Environmental Engineering, and in Stanford’s School of Medicine; and&nbsp;<a href="https://profiles.stanford.edu/arun-majumdar" data-extlink="" target="_blank">Arun Majumdar</a>, dean of Stanford Doerr School of Sustainability, professor in the departments of Energy Science &amp; Engineering, of Mechanical Engineering, and of Photon Science at SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory, and senior fellow at the Precourt Institute and Stanford Woods Institute for the Environment. Civil &amp; Environmental Engineering is a joint department of the&nbsp;<a href="https://engineering.stanford.edu/" target="_blank">Stanford School of Engineering</a>&nbsp;and the Stanford Doerr School of Sustainability.&nbsp;<a href="https://www.is.uni-freiburg.de/mitarbeiter-en/team/dirk-neumann" data-extlink="" target="_blank">Dirk Neumann</a>, a professor of information systems research at Albert-Ludwigs-Universität in Freiburg, Germany, is also a co-author. Ram Rajagopal is also co-director of the Bits &amp; Watts Initiative at the&nbsp;<a href="http://energy.stanford.edu/" data-extlink="" target="_blank">Precourt Institute for Energy</a>, which is part of the&nbsp;<a href="https://sustainability.stanford.edu/" data-extlink="" target="_blank">Stanford Doerr School of Sustainability</a>.

What measures can be taken to reduce the "solar equity gap"? | Image courtesy of Hans Wilschut

A new study finds that factory and warehouse rooftops offer a big untapped opportunity to help disadvantaged communities bridge the solar energy divide.

Stanford-led research shows how commercial rooftop solar power could bring affordable clean energy to low-income homes

A new way to make an important ingredient for plastics, adhesives, carpet fibers, household cleaners and more from natural gas could reduce manufacturing costs in a post-petroleum economy by millions of dollars, thanks to a new chemical reactor designed by University of Michigan engineers.<img src="https://s3-us-west-1.amazonaws.com/wevolver-project-images/froala%2F1711496916104-linic-lab.jpg" style="width: 100%px;" class="fr-fic fr-dib">Rawan Almallahi, a doctoral graduate of chemical engineering and the study’s first author, is preparing a reactor for a performance test inside a furnace. Suljo Linic, the Martin Lewis Perl Collegiate Professor of Chemical Engineering and the study’s corresponding author, assists Almallahi. Photo credit: Sandra Swisher, Department of Chemical Engineering, University of Michigan.The reactor creates propylene, a workhorse chemical that is also used to make a long list of <a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK507483/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">industrial chemicals</a>, including ingredients for nitrile rubber found in automotive hoses and seals as well as blue protective gloves. Most propylene used today comes from oil refineries, which collect it as a byproduct of refining crude oil into gasoline.As oil and gasoline fall out of vogue in favor of natural gas, solar, and wind energy, production of propylene and other oil-derived products could fall below the current demand without new ways to make them.Natural gas extracted from shale holds one potential alternative to propylene sourced from crude oil. It’s rich in propane, which resembles propylene closely enough to be a promising precursor material, but current methods to make propylene from natural gas are still too inefficient to bridge the gap in supply and demand.“It’s very hard to economically convert propane into propylene,” said<a href="https://che.engin.umich.edu/people/linic-suljo/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">&nbsp;Suljo Linic</a>, the Martin Lewis Perl Collegiate Professor of Chemical Engineering and the corresponding author of the study published in Science.“You need to heat that reaction to drive it, and standard methods require very high temperatures to produce enough propylene. At those temperatures, you don’t just get propylene but solid carbon deposits and other undesirable products that impair the catalyst. To regenerate the reactor, we need to burn off the solid carbon deposits often, which makes the process inefficient.”The researchers’ new reactor system efficiently makes propylene from shale gas by separating propane into propylene and hydrogen gas. It also gives hydrogen a way out, changing the balance between the concentration of propane and reaction products in a way that allows more propylene to be made. Once separated, the hydrogen can also be safely burned away from the propane, heating the reactor enough to speed up the reactions without making any undesirable compounds.<img src="https://s3-us-west-1.amazonaws.com/wevolver-project-images/froala%2F1711496937117-shale-propylene-membrane-diagram.png" style="width: 100%px;" class="fr-fic fr-dib">The innermost tube of the reactor splits propane into hydrogen gas and propylene and allows the hydrogen gas to escape into the outermost shell of the reactor. That hydrogen gas can be burned to further drive the reactions. Image credit: James Wortman, Linic Lab, University of Michigan.This separation is achieved through the reactor’s nested, hollow-fiber membrane tubing. The innermost tube is made up of materials that splits the propane into propylene and hydrogen gas. While the tubing keeps most of the propylene inside the innermost chamber, the hydrogen gas can escape into an outer chamber through pores in a membrane layer of the material. Inside that chamber, the hydrogen gas is controllably burned by mixing in precise amounts of oxygen.Because the hydrogen can be burned inside the reactor and can operate under higher propane pressures, the technology could allow plants to produce propylene from natural gas without installing extra heaters. A plant that produces 500,000 metric tons of propylene annually could save as much as $23.5 million over other methods starting with shale gas, according to the researchers’ estimates. Those savings come on top of the operational savings from burning hydrogen produced in reaction, rather than other fuels.The research was funded by the U.S. Department of Energy’s Office of Basic Energy Sciences, the RAPID Manufacturing Institute and the National Science Foundation.The reactor materials were studied at the&nbsp;<a href="https://mc2.engin.umich.edu/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Michigan Center for Materials Characterization</a>. The team is pursuing patent protection with the assistance of U-M Innovation Partnerships and is seeking partners to bring the technology to market.Suljo Linic is also a professor of integrative systems and design.

With oil production dropping, a process using natural gas is needed to avert a shortage of a workhorse chemical used for automotive parts, cleaning products and more.

New reactor could save millions when making ingredients for plastics and rubber from natural gas

Lignin, a complex organic polymer, is one of the main components of wood, providing structural support and rigidity to make trees strong enough to withstand the elements. When transforming wood into paper, lignin is a key ingredient that must be removed and often becomes waste.<img src="https://s3-us-west-1.amazonaws.com/wevolver-project-images/froala%2F1710979930198-240208_naunheim_washu_mckelvey_labs_007-760x507.jpg" style="width: 100%px;" class="fr-fic fr-dib">Marcus Foston (left) and collaborators are exploring how to use lignin, a common waste product of paper pulping, as a source of renewable alteratives to petroleum-derived chemicals. (Photo: Jerry Naunheim)Marcus Foston, associate professor of energy, environmental &amp; chemical engineering in the McKelvey School of Engineering at Washington University in St. Louis, is exploring how to add value to lignin by breaking it down into small molecules that are structurally similar to oxygenated hydrocarbons. These renewable chemicals are key components in many industrial processes and products, but they are traditionally sourced from non-renewable petroleum.Foston’s study of lignin disassembly, done in collaboration with Sai Venkatesh Pingali, a neutron scattering scientist at Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ONRL), was published Jan. 17 in Sustainable Chemistry &amp; Engineering.“Lignin’s structure actually looks a lot like what we get from petroleum,” said Foston, who is also the director of WashU’s Synthetic Biology Manufacturing of Advanced Materials Research Center (SMARC). “In current manufacturing processes, we spend time making petroleum look like the elements of lignin. Instead, I’m using a catalyst to break lignin down more easily and in such a way that it produces specific chemicals. Once we can produce chemical from lignin in a form we want, then we can make more efficient use of lignin, which is an abundant byproduct of pulping wood into paper.”With collaborators at ORNL, Foston used neutron scattering to study how lignin interacts with solvents and catalysts during its disassembly under reaction conditions, including high temperature and pressure. ORNL’s advanced facilities allowed researchers to observe the reaction process in real time to improve their catalyst and further streamline reaction systems for lignin depolymerization. This direct, molecular-level view is critical, Foston said, to figure out how the catalyst and lignin behave in solution and to ensure the lignin doesn’t recondense into a polymer with bonds scientists can’t easily break.“In this study, we’re specifically thinking about how we can take the large amount of lignin that gets produced during biofuel or paper production and use it to make renewable chemicals that replace some of the chemicals we currently get from petroleum,” Foston said. “More broadly, the same depolymerization principles we’re exploring with lignin could be used in other applications. For example, the same lessons from this study apply to plastic waste scenarios, where one approach is to deconstruct plastic waste into small molecules that could be used to make plastic or other useful products.”“Ultimately, we want to take a bunch of chemicals that are coming from petroleum and figure out how we can make those renewably,” Foston added. “Everything we’re learning about lignin will apply to other spaces as well.”<hr>Zhang J, Yang Z, Ponukumati A, Senanayake M, Pingali SV, and Foston M. Structural evolution of lignin using in situ small-angle neutron scattering during catalytic disassembly. ACS Sustainable Chemistry &amp; Engineering. Jan. 17, 2024. DOI: <a href="https://pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/acssuschemeng.3c06368?ref=PDF" target="_blank">https://pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/acssuschemeng.3c06368?ref=PDF</a>&nbsp;

Marcus Foston takes a detailed look at lignin disassembly on path to replace petroleum with renewables

Transforming wood waste for sustainable manufacturing

By leveraging the inherent energy storage properties of an emerging technology known as enhanced geothermal, the research team found that flexible geothermal power combined with cost declines in drilling technology could lead to over 100 gigawatts’ worth of geothermal projects in the western U.S. — a capacity greater than that of the existing U.S. nuclear fleet. Such an innovation would transform geothermal energy from its niche status on the grid today into a major component of a decarbonized future. The researchers <a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/s41560-023-01437-y" target="_blank">published their analysis</a> January 15 in Nature Energy.“People generally think of geothermal as this always-on, baseload energy source, but we’ve shown that there’s a lot of extra value to be had in operating these plants in a different way,” said research leader <a href="https://engineering.princeton.edu/faculty/jesse-jenkins" target="_blank">Jesse Jenkins</a>, assistant professor of <a href="https://mae.princeton.edu/" target="_blank">mechanical and aerospace engineering</a> and the <a href="https://acee.princeton.edu/" target="_blank">Andlinger Center for Energy and the Environment</a>.Since the early 20th century, people have been harnessing the earth’s heat to produce electricity, but these conventional geothermal power plants require a specific set of conditions: hot, permeable rocks close to the earth’s surface, and some sort of fluid to transport heat up from underground. These requirements have limited traditional geothermal energy to only a handful of favorable locations in the western United States and Hawaii — places with naturally occurring geysers, volcanoes, and hot springs. Consequently, geothermal plants generated only <a href="https://www.eia.gov/energyexplained/geothermal/use-of-geothermal-energy.php" target="_blank">0.4% of the total electricity</a> in the U.S. in 2022.Yet advances in drilling and hydraulic fracturing technologies have unlocked the enhanced geothermal approach, which removes the need for permeable rocks and greatly expands access to the heat that already exists far beneath our feet.<img src="https://s3-us-west-1.amazonaws.com/wevolver-project-images/froala%2F1709337323262-fervo_horizontal-drilling_crop.png" style="width: 100%px;" class="fr-fic fr-dib">A diagram illustrating the enhanced geothermal approach employed by Fervo Energy. Fluid is first injected at the injection well, flows through engineered fractures in subsurface rock, picking up heat along the way, and then returns to the surface via production wells to generate electricity. The process creates a self-contained underground radiator that can function as a type of energy storage system (courtesy of Fervo Energy).In the approach, engineers dig two or more boreholes into impermeable rock that extend thousands of feet below the earth’s surface, then drill similar distances horizontally, and subsequently create fracture networks in the horizontal sections to connect those holes deep underground. Afterward, they inject a fluid into one borehole, which heats up as it travels through the fractures. That heated fluid can be pulled up through the other wells and subsequently used to generate electricity.“Enhanced geothermal is much less geographically dependent than conventional geothermal, which is really only possible in a small number of ideal spots,” said Wilson Ricks, first author of the study and a graduate student in mechanical and aerospace engineering. “With enhanced geothermal, you can open up wide swathes of the country — wherever you can dig down and find hot rocks close to the earth’s surface.”<h3>Adding value through flexibility</h3>Efforts to develop and scale enhanced geothermal energy have historically focused on lowering the costs associated with drilling and other equipment. The U.S. Department of Energy unveiled an&nbsp;<a href="https://www.energy.gov/eere/geothermal/enhanced-geothermal-shot" target="_blank">Enhanced Geothermal Shot</a> in 2022, for example, which calls for a 90% cost reduction of enhanced geothermal technologies by 2035.But in their research, the team found an alternate avenue to make geothermal power more market-competitive: flexibility.By operating enhanced geothermal power plants flexibly — using the inherent energy storage capabilities offered by enhanced geothermal reservoirs to generate more or less energy as needed — the team found that the value of geothermal energy dramatically increased because it could complement and compensate for intermittent energy sources such as solar and wind.“Wind and solar are now the cheapest sources of clean energy, but their downfall is their variability and weather dependency,” said Jenkins. “You can earn a lot of additional revenue if you can find a way to shift your clean energy generation to times without wind and solar.”Fortunately for enhanced geothermal, it can do just that.As Ricks explained, the impermeable rock required for enhanced geothermal also functions as a self-contained underground reservoir for heated fluid that acts like a giant energy storage system.Analogous to how a conventional battery can be charged and discharged to store and release energy, operators can change how fast they inject and extract fluid into the enhanced geothermal system to shift between energy production and energy storage. To “charge” the system, engineers would simply inject more fluid underground than they pull out, filling up the reservoir with heated fluid and building up pressure. And when clean energy is most needed, this heated, pressurized fluid can be discharged to the earth’s surface to generate electricity.“Because enhanced geothermal comes with its own variation of energy storage, you’re able to shift how you operate the plant to generate as much power as possible at the times when it’s most valuable to the grid,” said Ricks. “That added flexibility allows enhanced geothermal to avoid generating energy when wind and solar are active and electricity prices are extremely low, something many alternative energy sources struggle to do.”<h3>Flexibility in practice</h3>Adding flexible operations to enhanced geothermal made the technology more valuable and increased its optimal installed capacity in every scenario, even without further cost declines in drilling technologies. In fact, scenarios that assumed flexible operations were similarly impactful to the deployment of geothermal as scenarios that only assumed lower drilling costs. Combining flexible operations&nbsp;and&nbsp;cost declines, the team found that geothermal energy could add up to over a third of the installed clean energy capacity in the western U.S.Moreover, adding flexibility to an otherwise baseload geothermal plant would only require a few changes at the aboveground facility. Engineers would have to overbuild the capacity of the power station to accommodate for the times when the plant is discharging as much heated fluid to the surface as possible, and they would need infrastructure to store additional fluid for the “charging” periods, when more fluid is being injected than produced.But below ground, the baseload and flexible systems would look nearly identical.“That’s one of the real advantages here: the core technology — in terms of the wells and the subsurface engineering — doesn’t change. Once you’ve built the wells, the subsurface system is inherently flexible,” said co-author Jack Norbeck, chief technology officer and co-founder of Fervo Energy, a startup focused on developing enhanced geothermal resources.In field testing at its commercial&nbsp;<a href="https://www.technologyreview.com/2023/03/07/1069437/this-geothermal-startup-showed-its-wells-can-be-used-like-a-giant-underground-battery/" target="_blank">Project Red</a> plant in Nevada, Fervo Energy has demonstrated energy storage capabilities exceeding five days. When translating that field data into physical models, Norbeck said there were scenarios in which the system could achieve over 10 days of energy storage.“When you consider that many people are currently quantifying long-duration energy storage as anything over eight to ten hours, that’s very exciting to be already demonstrating something above five days,” Norbeck said.While initial field tests have validated many projections, Norbeck said work is still needed to demonstrate the robustness of flexible operations over many charge/discharge cycles and to characterize certain system properties like roundtrip efficiency. He added that flexible geothermal power will also require innovations to contract structures, since purchasing agreements for geothermal energy often assume that plants will operate as a baseload energy source.With support from the&nbsp;<a href="https://www.arpa-e.energy.gov/technologies/projects/fervoflex-long-duration-reservoir-energy-storage-and-load-following" target="_blank">Advanced Research Projects Agency for Energy (ARPA-E)</a>, Fervo Energy and Princeton’s ZERO Lab will continue their collaboration to explore these advanced geothermal techniques in the field and in computer models, answering key questions about the potential role of geothermal energy, as well as the necessary steps for achieving that role.“In <a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0306261922002537" target="_blank">earlier work</a>, we’ve looked at the value of adding flexible operations to a single, first-of-its-kind enhanced geothermal plant, and in this work, we’ve answered the broader question of how flexible geothermal might fit into a future decarbonized energy system,” Ricks said. “The next step is to look at the intermediate timescale to understand how enhanced geothermal can get from the nascent technology it is today to become the clean energy heavy hitter we’ve shown it can be.”<hr>The paper, “<a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/s41560-023-01437-y" target="_blank">The role of flexible geothermal power in decarbonized electricity systems</a>,” was published January 15 in Nature Energy. In addition to Jenkins, Ricks, and Norbeck, co-authors include Katharine Voller and Gerame Galban of Fervo Energy. The work was supported by the U.S. Department of Energy Office of Science Small Business Innovation Research program, ARPA-E, and Princeton University’s Zero-carbon Technology Consortium.

A drilling rig at Fervo Energy's Project Red enhanced geothermal pilot project in Nevada (photograph courtesy of Fervo Energy).

Many consider geothermal to be an around-the-clock clean energy resource, but according to a Princeton-led study in collaboration with startup Fervo Energy, operating new geothermal plants flexibly could provide the best value for the grid.

Flexible geothermal power approach combines clean energy with a built-in "battery"

Faulty wind turbine blades can incur huge costs for the companies that operate them, especially if the defects go unnoticed until it’s too late. That’s why quality assurance is such a strategic issue for global wind-turbine manufacturers. Today, quality inspections are limited to surface inspection of limited areas as these composite structures roll off the production line. But under a new approach co-created by EPFL and University of Glasgow researchers, inspection engineers can use a new patented radar technology, combined with an AI assistant, to detect possible anomalies beneath the surface. This approach has many advantages: it’s non-destructive, non-contact, supports agile and rapid data acquisition and analysis, and requires very little power to operate. The research has just been published in&nbsp;Elsevier Mechanical Systems and Signal Processing (MSSP).<h2>Merging Signal processing and AI</h2>The research draws on earlier work from both institutional partners. This work was led by Olga Fink, today a tenure-track assistant professor of civil engineering and head of the Intelligent Maintenance and Operations Systems Laboratory (IMOS) within EPFL’s School of Architecture, Civil and Environmental Engineering (ENAC). In previous research, she has developed methods for detecting anomalies by processing the sounds produced by faulty machines, for background noise suppression on audio recordings and for classifying bird songs by infusing learning capabilities into well-known and well-grounded signal processing approaches.<blockquote>Manufacturers are building wind turbines bigger, with more complicated designs. All that increases the chances of a defect occurring during the manufacturing stage<footer>Olga Fink, Head of the Intelligent Maintenance and Operations Systems Laboratory (IMOS)</footer></blockquote>Today, she’s looking at new applications for her AI-driven systems. “Wind turbines are made from several different composite materials like fiberglass and carbon fiber,” she says. “Manufacturers are also building them bigger, with more complicated designs. All that increases the chances of a defect occurring during the manufacturing stage.”<h2>Measurement technology</h2>The University of Glasgow team, led by Prof. David Flynn, James Watt School of Engineering, and Head of Research Division for Autonomous Systems and Connectivity has pioneered methods in prognostics and health management. They have explored how Robotics and Artificial Intelligence (RAI) can support net zero infrastructure. The researchers in Glasgow used a patented Frequency Modulated Continuous Wave radar with a robotic arm to inspect industrial wind-turbine blade samples at distances of 5, 10 and 15 centimeters from the sample. Using signal processing methods, they could isolate features and precursors to future failures in these complex composite samples (see below a video produced by the University of Glasgow).<iframe width="640" height="360" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/HZ0o01b6RTs?&amp;wmode=opaque&amp;enablejsapi=1&amp;origin=https://www.wevolver.com" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen="" class="fr-draggable" data-lf-form-tracking-inspected-kn9eq4roawkarlvp="true" data-lf-yt-playback-inspected-kn9eq4roawkarlvp="true" data-lf-vimeo-playback-inspected-kn9eq4roawkarlvp="true"></iframe><h2 id="isPasted">Improve data representation</h2>When providing this experimental data to the IMOS team, the challenge was to enhance the information content of the features embedded within this raw data. It turned out that the signals obtained by the radar varied depending on the inspection distance and the blade’s surface material and core material. Gaëtan Frusque, a postdoc at IMOS and the study’s lead author, explains: “At IMOS, we used a complex-value representation of the signals to better separate the information they contain, and to adapt the AI model accordingly.” As a result, the algorithm they developed can distinguish anomalies from uniform turbine parts.The Glasgow researchers now plan to collect more data to further validate the IMOS results. The researchers plan to eventually test their method on existing turbines, which they can do by fitting the sensor to a robotic arm or onto a drone. This should enable them to spot manufacturing defects in turbines before they’re put into service or to inspect the turbines during operation. Once installed, defect-free turbines can operate for around 20 years.<hr>References<a href="https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ymssp.2023.111022" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Gaëtan Frusque, Daniel Mitchell, Jamie Blanche, David Flynn and Olga Fink, "Non-contact Sensing for Anomaly Detection in Wind Turbine Blades: A focus-SVDD with Complex-Valued Auto-Encoder Approach." Mechanical Systems and Signal Processing, 208, 15 February 2024.</a>

Once installed, defect-free turbines can operate for around 20 years. © iStock EPFL

An international collaboration between EPFL and the University of Glasgow has led to an advanced machine-learning algorithm to effectively detect concealed manufacturing defects in wind turbine composite blades – before turbines are put into service.

AI-driven method helps improve quality assurance for wind turbines

Research and industry worldwide are working on the commercialization of perovskite photovoltaics.&nbsp;Most research laboratories focus on solvent-based manufacturing processes because they are versatile and easy to use.&nbsp;However, established photovoltaic companies today rely almost exclusively on vacuum processes to deposit high-quality thin films.&nbsp;An international consortium led by the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT) and the US Department of Energy's National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL, USA) has analyzed this critical discrepancy between laboratory and industry.&nbsp;They emphasize: Industrially proven vacuum processes could, with certain improvements, contribute to the rapid commercialization of perovskite solar cells.&nbsp;The results appeared in&nbsp;Energy &amp; Environmental Science (DOI:&nbsp;<a href="https://pubs.rsc.org/en/content/articlepdf/2024/ee/d3ee03273f" target="_blank">10.1039/d3ee03273f</a> ).Perovskite-silicon tandem solar cells have undergone rapid development in the past ten years: Efficiencies of more than 33 percent have been achieved in research.&nbsp;This means they are already better than conventional silicon-based solar cells.&nbsp;However, it is still not ready for the market.&nbsp;One of the hurdles is the unresolved question of which process can best be used to produce perovskite solar cells as a mass product.&nbsp;Solvent-based manufacturing processes that are used in laboratories worldwide are contrasted with vapor phase deposition processes in vacuum, which are still standard today in the production of thin films in photovoltaics or in the production of organic light-emitting diodes (OLEDs). &nbsp; In a current comparative study, an international consortium of academic and industrial partners led by NREL and KIT revealed major differences in the scientific approach to these production processes.&nbsp;Tenure-track professor Ulrich W. Paetzold from the Institute of Microstructure Technology and the Light Technology Institute of KIT explains: “98 percent of all scientific studies in 2022 were published on solvent-based processes.&nbsp;Vacuum-based processes that have proven themselves in industry for decades and could significantly advance the commercialization of solar cells are neglected.”To explain: Solvent-based production uses inks in which organic and inorganic salts are dissolved in a solvent.&nbsp;These inks can then be deposited onto the surface of a substrate via various printing techniques.&nbsp;In contrast, vacuum-based manufacturing uses dry and solvent-free processes.&nbsp;The materials are sublimated in a vacuum with the addition of heat, i.e. transferred from the solid to the gaseous state and condensed on the substrate surface.&nbsp;In principle, it is also possible to combine both processes for the production of perovskite solar cells.<h2>Laboratory efficiencies and throughput are not everything when it comes to mass production</h2>In the study, the authors analyzed the advantages and disadvantages of both methods.&nbsp;The dominance of solvent-based production in research so far lies in its uncomplicated handling in laboratories, which is the reason for very good results in terms of efficiency under laboratory conditions and its low costs.&nbsp;In addition, there is the possible scalable roll-to-roll production, i.e. endless deposition between two rolls, similar to newspaper printing.In comparison, the vacuum-based production process causes slightly higher investment costs and, based on the processes used in research, is currently still behind in terms of deposition speed, i.e. production throughput.&nbsp;However, the authors show a variety of possible solutions and estimate that it is competitive taking into account real parameters such as electricity costs, production yield, material, decommissioning or recycling costs.&nbsp;Above all, the good repeatability of the deposition, the simple process control, the availability of industrial process equipment and the easy scaling of the deposition from small solar cell areas in the laboratory to application-relevant product areas make the process highly interesting for commercialization.&nbsp;“Vacuum-based production performs better than its reputation,” says Tobias Abzieh.&nbsp;It is therefore not surprising that the authors, in a first-ever published overview of commercialization activities in perovskite technology, were already able to demonstrate a lively interest in vacuum-based processes for the production of perovskite solar cells on the part of industry - despite the discrepancy in this regard on the method mainly used in research.In order for vacuum-based processes to fully exploit their scaling effects, the manufacturing method still needs to be further improved, according to the researchers. Among other things, further research must be carried out on the quality of the separation in order to further increase the efficiency. It is also important to significantly increase the speed of deposition. “Vacuum-based manufacturing processes are not only the industry’s first choice when it comes to bringing thin-film technologies to market maturity. Our analysis also shows that the processes are competitive with solvent-based approaches,” adds David More from NREL.<hr>Original publicationTobias Abzieh, David T. Moore, Marcel Roß, Steve Albrecht, Jared Silvia, Hairen Tan, Quentin Jeangros, Christophe Ballif, Maximilian T. Hoerantner, Beom-Soo Kim, Henk J. Bolink, Paul Pistor, Jan Christoph Goldschmidt, Yu -Hsien Chiang, Samuel D. Stranks, Juliane Borchert, Michael D. McGehee, Monica Morales-Masis, Jay B. Patel, Annalisa Bruno and Ulrich W. Paetzold: Vapor phase deposition of perovskite photovoltaics: short track to commercialization? Energy &amp; Environmental Science, 2024. DOI: 10.1039/d3ee03273f

Perovskite photovoltaics promise high levels of efficiency. Researchers from KIT and partners have now analyzed different production approaches. (Photo: Tobias Zieher)

Various production approaches in research and industry – comparative study explores paths to mass production

Perovskite Solar Cells: Vacuum Process Can Lead to Market Readiness

Governments around the world and companies in all industries and businesses are coming together to engage in efforts to achieve carbon neutrality (Fig. 1). Every conceivable multifaceted decarbonization measure is being taken. This includes, for instance, the utilization of renewable energies such as solar power, the electrification of equipment that was previously used by burning fossil fuels, and the reduction in power consumption of existing devices like home appliances, IT equipment, and industrial motors.Various countries and regions have introduced carbon pricing mechanisms as systems to shift greenhouse gas emissions from business activities to costs. As a result, in addition to being meaningful as social contribution, carbonization initiatives now have a clear numerical impact on the financial statements that serve as a report card for corporate management.<img src="https://s3-us-west-1.amazonaws.com/wevolver-project-images/froala%2F1707718138849-power-semicon-img0001.jpg" style="width: 766px;" class="fr-fic fr-dib">Fig. 1: Acceleration in the pace of efforts for electrification and a reduction in power consumption to achieve carbon neutrality<h2 id="isPasted">Full Model Change in Semiconductor Materials for the First Time in 50 Years</h2>There has been an increase in activity for decarbonization efforts. Against this background, there is a field in semiconductors where the pace of the movement in technological innovation is rapidly accelerating. This is the power semiconductor field.Power semiconductors are semiconductor devices that play the role of managing, controlling, and converting the power necessary to operate electrical and electronic equipment. These devices are built into so-called power electronics circuits. These circuits include power circuits that stably supply drive power to home appliances and IT equipment, power conversion circuits to transmit and distribute power without waste, and circuits that drive motors with high efficiency at a torque and rotational speed that can be controlled freely. These power semiconductors, which are key devices to realize a sustainable society, have now started to undergo a once-in-50-years full model change.Power semiconductors have various device structures including MOSFET*1, IGBT*2, and diodes. They are used differently according to the purpose. Nevertheless, although the structure differs, silicon (Si) has consistently been used for more than 50 years as the device material. That is because Si has good electrical characteristics and has the property of being easy to process into various device structures at the same time.*1: A Metal Oxide Semiconductor Field Effect Transistor (MOSFET) is a type of Field Effect Transistor. It functions as an electrical switch. These transistors consist of three layers: a metal, oxide, and semiconductor. The current is turned on and off by applying a voltage to the electrode called a gate.*2: An Insulated Gate Bipolar Transistor (IGBT) is a transistor with a structure that combines a MOSFET and bipolar transistor. It is characterized by combining the high-speed operation of the MOSFET with the high withstand voltage and low resistance of the bipolar transistor. &nbsp;However, Si-based power semiconductors are no longer able to clear the high level of technical requirements to further reduce the power consumption of various electrical and electronic equipment. To overcome this situation, progress is underway on the utilization of new materials such as silicon carbide (SiC) and gallium nitride (GaN), which are more suitable than Si as materials for power semiconductors. SiC and GaN have multiple physical properties and characteristics suitable for power semiconductors. These include their dielectric breakdown field strength (affects the withstand voltage), mobility (affects the operating speed), and thermal conductivity (affects reliability). If we can develop a device that brings out those excellent characteristics, we can realize power semiconductors with even higher performance.SiC-based MOSFETs and diodes have already been commercialized. They are being used in electric vehicle (EV) motor drive inverters, DC/AC converters in solar power generation power conditioners, and other equipment. GaN-based HEMT*3 have also already been commercialized. They are now being used in AC converters for ultra-small PCs, chargers for smartphones, and other equipment.*3: A High Electron Mobility Transistor (HEMT) is a Field Effect Transistor that enables high-speed switching by joining semiconductors with differing properties to induce electrons with high mobility.<h2>Evolution of Capacitors, Inductors, and Other Equipment Is Essential to Draw out the Potential of SiC and GaN</h2>It is not possible to draw out the full outstanding potential of power semiconductors made based on new materials simply by replacing the Si-based devices in existing power electronics circuits. This is because the other semiconductor ICs, passive components, and even the control software that comprise power electronics circuits have been developed and selected on the assumption they would be used in Si-based power semiconductors. It is necessary to newly re-develop and re-select these peripheral components as well to effectively utilize new material-based power semiconductors.<img src="https://s3-us-west-1.amazonaws.com/wevolver-project-images/froala%2F1707718176002-power-semicon-img0002_en.png" style="width: 766px;" class="fr-fic fr-dib">Fig. 2: Example of an AC/DC converter circuit utilizing a GaN-based power semiconductor used in data center servers and other technologiesFor example, numerous GaN HEMTs are being used in AC/DC converter circuits that have adopted GaN HEMTs recently introduced to lower power consumption in the power supplies of data center servers (Fig. 2). It is possible to improve the switching frequency (operating frequency) of power electronics circuits by utilizing the features of GaN HEMTs in that they enable high-speed switching at high voltages. The reactance value of capacitors embedded into circuits and inductors in reactor signal processing circuits can be lower in circuits with a high operating frequency. In general, low reactance components have a small size. Therefore, it is possible to downsize the circuit board and to improve the power density. Similarly, introducing SiC MOSFETs even in inverter circuits which drive EV motors and other components enables the downsizing of peripheral components and also allows the overall inverter circuits to be made smaller and more lightweight.On the other hand, a high level of noise may arise from high-voltage and high-speed switching power supplies. There is a possibility that noise may then adversely affect the operation of the peripheral equipment. Power supplies comprising power semiconductors made with SiC and GaN switch at an even higher frequency. Therefore, the risk of noise occurring further increases. Accordingly, stricter noise suppression is required than when using existing power electronics circuits. At that time, there is a need to use noise suppression components designed to be applied to high-voltage, large-current, and high-frequency circuits rather than those for conventional circuits.In addition, there is also a need for small transformers that operate at even higher frequencies for transformers that are particularly heavy components even among passive components. Low profile planar transformers and other components have already been developed and launched onto the market under the assumption that they will be used in SiC- and GaN-based power semiconductors.<h2>Attention Focusing on the Evolution of Peripheral Components in Addition to Power Semiconductors</h2>Various types of semiconductors, not limited to power semiconductors, have been made based on Si up to now. Therefore, many existing electronic components have been developed under the implicit assumption that they will be used by being combined with Si-based semiconductors. It may become necessary to develop new products to suit the new technical requirements instead of simply searching for even better products among existing components to maximize the effect of introducing power semiconductors made with new materials.<img src="https://s3-us-west-1.amazonaws.com/wevolver-project-images/froala%2F1707718216959-power-semicon-img0003_en.png" style="width: 766px;" class="fr-fic fr-dib">Fig. 3: Distribution of power semiconductors by device material and structureIn general, Si-based power semiconductors tend to operate at lower speeds the greater the voltage and current they can handle (Fig. 3). That is the reason why there are not enough small capacitors and reactors that can handle high voltages and large currents. Moreover, there is a trend to simplify the heat dissipation system and to reduce the size, weight, and cost for SiC-based power semiconductors that can operate stably under high temperatures. In these cases, the passive components also need to have a guaranteed high reliability under a high-temperature environment.The introduction of new materials in the power semiconductor field is a major move to update the electrical and electronic ecosystem that has been optimized to Si materials for more than 50 years. Therefore, we also want to pay a great deal of attention to the evolution of peripheral electronic components optimized for new materials.<hr id="isPasted"><img src="https://s3-us-west-1.amazonaws.com/wevolver-project-images/froala%2F1707718258902-1707718258901.png" class="fr-fic fr-dii">If you have any questions based on this article that you would like to discuss with an expert at Murata, don't hesitate to reach out. There's an entire team ready to support you with your question.<a href="https://www.murata.com/en-eu/contactform?&Detail=Wevolver%20request" target="_blank" rel="nofollow" class="button-main-action">GET IN TOUCH</a>

Governments around the world and companies in all industries and businesses are coming together to engage in efforts to achieve carbon neutrality. Every conceivable multifaceted decarbonization measure is being taken.

What Are the Conditions for Increasing the Efficiency of Power Conversion and Motor Drives and for Expanding the Use of SiC and GaN Power Semiconductors?

As the world looks to phase out fossil fuels in favor of cleaner, renewable energy sources, more effort is being put into improving existing renewable technologies and creating devices that can harness renewable energy sources in new ways. Sunlight captured in solar cells is currently one of the most used renewable energy sources. However, there are also a number of other ways in which sunlight can be harnessed to produce energy.Given the amount of sun that hits the Earth each day, there is excellent potential for solar-based energy harvesting devices to become one of the front runners in a cleaner and greener society—and expand on their existing position as one of the leading renewable technologies. Designers are testing and using 2D materials in a number of these solar-harvesting systems, from the widespread use of graphene in solar cells to the use of different 2D materials in photocatalytic and photothermal harvesting approaches.<h2>Photovoltaics (Solar Cells)</h2>Of all the solar harvesting methodologies and technologies in existence, solar cells are by and far the most commercialized, most popular, and most efficient choice. There are several bulk solar cells in existence composed of silicon and perovskite materials. In addition, a number of approaches are being developed where 2D materials (and other nanomaterials) are being used to either improve the performance of bulk silicon solar cells or offer a way to create much thinner and/or more flexible solar cells. In the latter, there are already a number of flexible organic solar cells; however, the active materials tend to suffer from a much lower performance than inorganic materials, so 2D materials offer a way of providing thinner solar cells with much-improved performance.<img src="https://s3-us-west-1.amazonaws.com/wevolver-project-images/froala%2F1707665382989-nuno-marques-0GbrjL3vZF4-unsplash.jpg" style="width: 766px;" class="fr-fic fr-dib">Photo by Nuno Marques on UnsplashMany devices are in existence where doped graphene has been used as the photoactive material in the semiconducting photovoltaic junction within solar cells, sometimes on its own and other times in conjunction with silicon in bulkier solar cells. Beyond this, graphene and its derivatives are touted as an alternative for the hole transport layer instead of expensive noble metals, such as silver and gold, in an attempt to lower the cost of large-scale solar cells. Graphene is also used in conjunction with silicon in a number of other hybrid devices, including in the creation of thinner, flexible and semi-transparent solar cells.While graphene is gathering the most interest, graphene and transition metal dichalcogenides (TMDCs) are being integrated into different solar cells—because of their stability and resistance to several potentially degrading stimuli—to improve their long-term stability and ensure that they run optimally for longer. These 2D materials are being integrated into a wide range of bulk solar cells on a commercial level, including in silicon and perovskite solar cells as well as in tandem solar cells.In recent years, the interest in flexible solar cells has significantly grown, and while graphene was the first 2D material tested for solar cells, the area has since expanded and continues to do so. In recent years, TMDCs have been used alongside graphene to create efficient, flexible solar cells and perovskite materials are now being made into 2D sheets to try and emulate the success of the bulkier perovskite solar cells—but in the form of a much smaller and flexible solar cell. 2D perovskite solar cells have not yet been able to reach the heights of their bulkier counterparts, but it is a much newer addition to the 2D family, so there is still plenty of time for them to play a part in 2D material-enhanced solar cells.<h2>Photocatalytic Harvesting</h2>Photocatalytic reactions generate new greener fuels and are different from many other energy harvesting technologies where the direct output is electricity. In photocatalytic harvesting, the energy from sunlight is harvested to produce fuel, which can then be used to power devices and electronic systems. Photocatalytic harvesting is currently a promising approach in water splitting technologies to produce hydrogen fuel.<img src="https://images.wevolver.com/eyJidWNrZXQiOiJ3ZXZvbHZlci1wcm9qZWN0LWltYWdlcyIsImtleSI6ImZyb2FsYS8xNzA3NjY1MTg2MzAzLWFuZHJlYXMtZ3Vja2xob3JuLUlscGYyZVVQcFVFLXVuc3BsYXNoLmpwZyIsImVkaXRzIjp7InJlc2l6ZSI6eyJ3aWR0aCI6OTUwLCJmaXQiOiJjb3ZlciJ9fX0=" style="width: 766px;" class="fr-fic fr-dib">Photo by Andreas Gücklhorn on UnsplashPhotocatalytic harvesting occurs when semiconducting materials are used. The photocatalytic harvesting occurs because the photons from the sunlight (with a high energy) generate an electron-hole pair in the semiconducting material once absorbed. However, these photogenerated excited states tend to be unstable, so the charge carriers recombine. During this separation and recombination process, the electrons and holes are transported across the surface of the material, which either reduces or oxidizes the absorbed atoms. It is this process that leads to the generation of hydrogen gas, and there is a similar photocatalytic process that can be used to generate oxygen molecules as well (often at the same time).Photocatalytic reactions can be initiated using a number of materials, and a number of different semiconducting 2D materials are used for these photocatalytic harvesting reactions. In many cases, the exposed edges on the 2D sheets offer an effective site for the photocatalytic reactions to take place. TMDCs, such as molybdenum disulfide, have gathered a great deal of interest because the sheets actively absorb hydrogen ions. Graphene and its derivatives—especially doped versions to make them semiconducting—are also well-tested materials because the high surface area of both graphene and TMDCs, alongside their absorption and electrical conductivity properties, make them suitable catalytic sites for hydrogen evolution reactions (HER) to produce hydrogen fuel.<h2>Photothermal Harvesting</h2>Photothermal harvesting approaches once again offer a different approach to many conventional solar harvesting technologies. In these harvesting methods, photothermal materials are used to absorb light energy and convert it into heat energy. 2D materials have a range of optical properties that can be harnessed to absorb light waves—and subsequently convert it into heat—with some of the 2D materials exhibiting optical properties that are unique and not found in other material classes, while others having very beneficial properties in general.2D materials are known to absorb wavelengths of electromagnetic radiation across a wide spectrum, including in the visible and near-infrared regions. However, these applications are very different in that these approaches are typically used in medical applications to enable different treatments to take place. The absorption of light and generation of heat means that different medical treatments can take place without the need for more invasive approaches. For example, heat is generated in the form of a vibrational energy, and this energy can be used to target and kill cancer cells.It's an approach that is more niche in nature, and while it doesn’t power devices, different 2D materials—from graphene derivatives, to TMDCs, to MXenes—are being used to harvest light to provide new and efficient medical treatments, and photothermal therapies are becoming an interesting application area for 2D materials alongside the more conventional solar energy harvesting operations.<h2>Conclusion</h2>Solar harvesting, in the form of solar cells, is already an established technology, but 2D materials are offering a way of improving the efficiencies and long-term stabilities of solar cells as well as offering new ways of creating thin, flexible, and transparent solar cells. Beyond solar cells, 2D materials offer great potential for creating hydrogen fuel via photocatalytic reactions and harvesting light for advanced cancer therapies. As modern society looks toward more ways of harvesting our natural environment, 2D materials offer a way to harvest solar rays into a usable output efficiently.

As the world looks to phase out fossil fuels in favor of cleaner, renewable energy sources, more effort is being put into improving existing renewable technologies and creating devices that can harness renewable energy sources in new ways.

Using 2D Materials in Photo-Harvesting Applications

What happens when you expose tellurite glass to femtosecond laser light? That’s the question that Gözden Torun at the Galatea Lab, in a collaboration with Tokyo Tech scientists, aimed to answer in her thesis work when she made the discovery that may one day turn windows into single material light-harvesting and sensing devices. The results are published in&nbsp;PR Applied.Interested in how the atoms in the tellurite glass would reorganize when exposed to fast pulses of high energy femtosecond laser light, the scientists stumbled upon&nbsp;<a href="https://doi.org/10.1002/adma.202210446" target="_blank" rel="noopener">the formation of nanoscale tellurium and tellurium oxide crystals</a>, both semiconducting materials etched into the glass, precisely where the glass had been exposed. That was the eureka moment for the scientists, since a semiconducting material exposed to daylight may lead to the generation of electricity.“Tellurium being semiconducting, based on this finding we wondered if it would be possible to write durable patterns on the tellurite glass surface that could reliably induce electricity when exposed to light, and the answer is yes,” explains Yves Bellouard who runs EPFL’s Galatea Laboratory. “An interesting twist to the technique is that no additional materials are needed in the process. All you need is tellurite glass and a femtosecond laser to make an active photoconductive material.”Using tellurite glass produced by colleagues at Tokyo Tech, the EPFL team brought their expertise in femtosecond laser technology to modify the glass and analyze the effect of the laser. After exposing a simple line pattern on the surface of a tellurite glass 1 cm in diameter, Torun found that it could generate a current when exposing it to UV light and the visible spectrum, and this, reliably for months.“It’s fantastic, we’re locally turning glass into a semiconductor using light,” says Yves Bellouard. “We’re essentially transforming materials into something else, perhaps approaching the dream of the alchemist!”.<hr>References<a href="https://journals.aps.org/prapplied/abstract/10.1103/PhysRevApplied.21.014008" target="_blank" rel="noopener">https://journals.aps.org/prapplied/abstract/10.1103/PhysRevApplied.21.014008</a>

A photoconductive circuit, where the circuit is directly patterned onto a glass surface with femtosecond laser light - 2024 EPFL / Lisa Ackermann - CC-BY-SA 4.0

EPFL physicists propose a novel way to create photoconductive circuits, where the circuit is directly patterned onto a glass surface with femtosecond laser light. The new technology may one day be useful for harvesting energy, while remaining transparent to light and using a single material.

Turning glass into a 'transparent' light-energy harvester

An insight into preventing perovskite semiconductors from degrading quickly, discovered at the University of Michigan, could help enable solar cells estimated to be <a href="https://solarmagazine.com/solar-panels/perovskite-solar-cells/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">two to four times cheaper</a> than today’s thin-film solar panels.&nbsp;Perovskites may also be combined with the silicon-based semiconductors that are prevalent in today’s solar panels to create <a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-023-03714-y" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">“tandem” solar cells</a> that could surpass the maximum theoretical efficiency of silicon solar cells.“Silicon solar cells are great because they are very efficient and can last for a very long time, but the high efficiency comes with a high cost,” said <a href="https://che.engin.umich.edu/people/gong-xiwen/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Xiwen Gong</a>, U-M assistant professor of chemical engineering. “To make high-purity silicon, temperatures over 1,000 degrees Celsius are needed. Otherwise, the efficiency won’t be as good.”The high temperature comes with higher economic and environmental costs. But while perovskites can be produced at lower temperatures, they degrade when exposed to heat, moisture and air. As a result, the lifespan of perovskite today is too short to be commercially competitive in solar panels.&nbsp;<img src="https://s3-us-west-1.amazonaws.com/wevolver-project-images/froala%2F1705965138185-solar-cell-1.jpg" style="width: 300px;" class="fr-fic fr-dib">Perovskite solar cells like this one, made by Xiwen Gong’s group, could make solar energy cheaper and more environmentally friendly—but they degrade faster than silicon. In a study published in the journal Matter, the team discovered how to make the black perovskite film last longer. Photo credit: Zhengtao Hu, Gong Lab, University of Michigan.Gong’s research aims to make hardier perovskite solar cells, and her latest study published in the journal Matter&nbsp;suggests that bulky “defect pacifying” molecules are best at increasing the perovskites’ stability and overall lifespan.Perovskite crystals contain lead atoms that aren’t fully bound to the other components within the perovskite. Such “undercoordinated sites” are defects often found on the crystal surfaces and at grain boundaries where there’s a break in the crystal lattice. These defects hinder the movement of electrons and speed up the decay of the perovskite material.&nbsp;Engineers already know that mixing defect pacifying molecules into the perovskites can help lock up the undercoordinated lead, in turn preventing other imperfections from forming at high temperatures. But until now, engineers didn’t know exactly how a given molecule affected the hardiness of perovskite cells.“We wanted to figure out what features on the molecules specifically improve the perovskite’s stability,” said Hongki Kim, a former postdoctoral researcher in chemical engineering and one of the study’s first authors.To investigate the problem, Gong’s team created three additives with a range of shapes and sizes and added them into thin films of perovskite crystals, which can absorb light and convert it to electricity. Each additive contained the same or similar chemical building blocks, which made size, weight and arrangement the main properties differentiating them.&nbsp;<img src="https://s3-us-west-1.amazonaws.com/wevolver-project-images/froala%2F1705965160076-Perovskite-Additive-Diagram-.jpg" style="width: 300px;" class="fr-fic fr-dib">Xiwen Gong’s team designed three molecular additives to study the impact of size and configuration on the stability of perovskite films—a material class crucial for creating efficient and cost-effective solar cells. These additives hinder the growth of defects at perovskite crystal lattice breaks, known as grain boundaries, ultimately enhancing solar cell efficiency. The bulkiest molecule effectively covers surface defects on perovskite grains, simultaneously increasing grain size during manufacturing. Larger grains lead to fewer grain boundaries, reducing potential defect sites. Image credit: Carlos A. Figueroa Morales, Gong Lab, University of Michigan.Then, the team measured how strongly the different additives interacted with perovskites and consequently influenced the formation of defects in the films. Larger molecules by mass were better at sticking to the perovskite because they had more binding sites that interact with perovskite crystals. As a result, they tended to be better at preventing defects from forming.But the best additives also needed to take up a lot of space. Large but skinny molecules resulted in smaller perovskite grains during the manufacturing process. Smaller grains aren’t ideal because they also create perovskite cells with more grain boundaries, or more areas for defects to form. In contrast, bulky molecules forced larger perovskite grains to form, which in turn reduced the density of grain boundaries in the film.Heating the perovskite films to over 200 degrees Celsius confirmed that bulky additives helped the films retain more of their characteristic slate black color and develop fewer structural defects.<img src="https://s3-us-west-1.amazonaws.com/wevolver-project-images/froala%2F1705965183557-Carlos-in-lab.jpg" style="width: 766px;" class="fr-fic fr-dib">Doctoral student Carlos Alejandro Figueroa Morales places a perovskite thin film sample into a spectrometer that measures the light-emitting properties of the perovskites. Changes in how the perovskite films emit light when made with the different additive molecules can reveal how many defects are inside the perovskite. Photo credit: Zhengtao Hu, Gong Lab, University of Michigan.“Both the size and configuration are important when designing additives, and we believe this design philosophy could be implemented across various perovskite formulations to further improve the lifetime of perovskite solar cells, light emitting devices and photodetectors,” said Carlos Alejandro Figueroa Morales, a doctoral student in macromolecular science and engineering and one of the study’s first authors.<hr>Xiwen Gong is also an assistant professor of electrical and computer engineering, materials science and engineering, macromolecular science and engineering, and applied physics. The research was funded by the University of Michigan and relied on a <a href="https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=1625671&HistoricalAwards=false" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">scanning electron microscope</a> funded by the National Science Foundation. Co-author Nancy Muyanja led the microscopy measurements at the <a href="https://mc2.engin.umich.edu/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Michigan Center for Materials Characterization</a>.

The findings could help engineers methodically find the best molecules to increase the lifespan of perovskite solar cells, rather than relying on time-consuming trial and error.

Bulky additives could make cheaper solar cells last longer

From powering electronic devices, to electric vehicles and renewable energy systems, the use of batteries as an energy storage solution has been prevalent. However, batteries have limitations like slow charging, limited lifespan, and restricted power output. This is where supercapacitors, also known as ultracapacitors or electric double-layer capacitors (EDLCs), step in.Supercapacitor CharacteristicsTo understand how supercapacitors can enhance batteries, it helps to understand what they do and how they work. There are several factors that need to be taken into consideration, including the application requirements.&nbsp;<h4>Considerations Based on Application Requirements</h4>First, determine the required capacitance for the application. The capacitance of the supercapacitors needed to complement the batteries will depend on the specific application requirements, such as the required power output, charge/discharge times, and energy density. This can be calculated using the formula:C = (I x t) / ΔVWhere C is the capacitance in Farads, I is the current in amps, t is the time in seconds, and ΔV is the voltage drop during discharge.<img src="https://s3-us-west-1.amazonaws.com/wevolver-project-images/froala%2F1703774887395-Screenshot%2B2023-11-06%2B151847.png" style="width: 300px;" class="fr-fic fr-dib"> Then, choose the appropriate supercapacitor voltage rating. The voltage rating of the supercapacitor should be chosen to be at least as high as the maximum battery voltage. This must be done to avoid overvoltage conditions that can damage the supercapacitor.&nbsp;Finally, consider the equivalent series resistance (ESR). The ESR of the supercapacitor can affect the overall system efficiency and power delivery. Lower ESR values generally provide better performance, but at a higher cost.&nbsp;<h4>External Component Considerations</h4>It is necessary to include high power balancing circuits. Balancing circuits can be added to ensure that each supercapacitor is charged and discharged evenly, preventing overvoltage or undervoltage conditions that can damage the supercapacitor or decrease its performance. Since supercapacitors operate at high current levels compared to batteries, it is important the balancing system can operate (correct voltage imbalances) at high current levels too.&nbsp;It is important to note that the electrical sizing and connection of supercapacitors and batteries will vary depending on the specific application and system requirements. It is recommended to consult with an expert or refer to the manufacturer's guidelines to ensure the best performance and safety of the system.<h4>Why Can Supercapacitors Complement Batteries?</h4>Supercapacitors can supply or absorb high current peaks. This allows the supercapacitor to take some of the load off the battery, improving its performance and reducing its wear and tear.Supercapacitors can also store and release energy much faster than conventional batteries. They function by storing electrical charge on the surface of specialized electrodes, typically made of materials like activated carbon. This design enables supercapacitors to deliver rapid bursts of high-power output, making them well-suited for applications requiring quick energy delivery, like regenerative braking in electric vehicles.This is a key advantage of supercapacitors. While batteries can take hours to charge fully, supercapacitors can achieve this in just seconds to minutes. This swift charging ability enables supercapacitors to provide a rapid energy boost to batteries, reducing overall charging time. &nbsp;Moreover, supercapacitors can extend the lifespan of batteries. Since batteries have a finite number of charge-discharge cycles before deterioration, supercapacitors can absorb some excess energy during high-power cycles. This reduces stress on the battery, prolonging its lifespan and reducing the need for frequent replacements.While not every application requires the use of supercapacitors they can be a valuable addition, particularly in scenarios where battery system performance needs optimization. This includes a variety of applications include e-mobility (bikes, cars, trucks, boats, and planes), renewable energy, telecom, and robotics.<h4>Renewable Application: Microgrids</h4><img src="https://s3-us-west-1.amazonaws.com/wevolver-project-images/froala%2F1703774927601-microgrid%2Bgraphic%2B-%2BAdobeStock_540991784.jpeg" style="width: 300px;" class="fr-fic fr-dib"><div data-block-type="2" id="isPasted">Renewable energy microgrids have rapidly gained interest as the demand for resilient energy systems have increased. These microgrids have typically included battery energy storage systems which are great for long duration storage, but they have a difficult time with dynamic situations. For example, the transient inrush currents from connecting a transformer, which could cause circuit breakers or protection circuits to trip. Another example is the instantaneous power draw of many electric vehicles plugging into the microgrid at once may be more power than a battery system alone can handle, potentially causing a brownout. What these microgrids need is a hybrid system, where long duration is handled by batteries, and short bursts of power are provided by power dense technologies, like supercapacitors.A supercapacitor’s ability to rapidly charge and discharge is beneficial in instances where renewables on the microgrid experience short fluctuations due to weather conditions (clouds passing over solar panels, for example). &nbsp;By having the supercapacitor provide the short bursts of power necessary to ride through these fluctuations, the batteries are protected from unnecessary cycling. This not only enhances the lifespan of the battery, but also contributes to long-term cost savings by minimizing the need for frequent battery replacements.&nbsp;</div><div data-block-type="2"><h4>Conclusion</h4></div><div data-block-type="2">Supercapacitors are a valuable complement to batteries, enhancing their performance by providing high-power output, rapid charging, and extended lifespan, making them particularly useful in applications like renewable energy systems. In applications with dynamic power fluctuations, a battery-supercapacitor hybrid energy storage system is recommended to optimize performance and efficiency.&nbsp;</div>

Batteries have limitations like slow charging, limited lifespan, and restricted power output. This is where supercapacitors, also known as ultracapacitors or electric double-layer capacitors (EDLCs), step in.

Unleashing the Potential of Supercapacitors in Hybrid Systems

MIT researchers and colleagues have demonstrated a way to precisely control the size, composition, and other properties of nanoparticles key to the reactions involved in a variety of clean energy and environmental technologies. They did so by leveraging ion irradiation, a technique in which beams of charged particles bombard a material.They went on to show that nanoparticles created this way have superior performance over their conventionally made counterparts.“The materials we have worked on could advance several technologies, from fuel cells to generate CO2-free electricity to the production of clean hydrogen feedstocks for the chemical industry [through electrolysis cells],” says Bilge Yildiz, leader of the work and a professor in MIT’s departments of Nuclear Science and Engineering and Materials Science and Engineering.<h2>Critical catalyst</h2>Fuel and electrolysis cells both involve electrochemical reactions through three principal parts: two electrodes (a cathode and anode) separated by an electrolyte. The difference between the two cells is that the reactions involved run in reverse.The electrodes are coated with catalysts, or materials that make the reactions involved go faster. But a critical catalyst made of metal-oxide materials has been limited by challenges including low durability. “The metal catalyst particles coarsen at high temperatures, and you lose surface area and activity as a result,” says Yildiz, who is also affiliated with the Materials Research Laboratory and is an author of&nbsp;<a href="https://pubs.rsc.org/en/content/articlelanding/2023/EE/D3EE02448B" target="_blank">an open-access paper on the work</a> published in the journal&nbsp;Energy &amp; Environmental Science.Enter metal exsolution, which involves precipitating metal nanoparticles out of a host oxide onto the surface of the electrode. The particles embed themselves into the electrode, “and that anchoring makes them more stable,” says Yildiz. As a result, exsolution has “led to remarkable progress in clean energy conversion and energy-efficient computing devices,” the researchers write in their paper.However, controlling the precise properties of the resulting nanoparticles has been difficult. “We know that exsolution can give us stable and active nanoparticles, but the challenging part is really to control it. The novelty of this work is that we’ve found a tool — ion irradiation — that can give us that control,” says Jiayue Wang PhD ’22, first author of the paper. Wang, who conducted the work while earning his PhD in the MIT Department of Nuclear Science and Engineering, is now a postdoc at Stanford University.Sossina Haile ’86, PhD ’92, the Walter P. Murphy Professor of Materials Science and Engineering at Northwestern University, who was not involved in the current work, says:“Metallic nanoparticles serve as catalysts in a whole host of reactions, including the important reaction of splitting water to generate hydrogen for energy storage. In this work, Yildiz and colleagues have created an ingenious method for controlling the way that nanoparticles form.”Haile continues, “the community has shown that exsolution results in structurally stable nanoparticles, but the process is not easy to control, so one doesn’t necessarily get the optimal number and size of particles. Using ion irradiation, this group was able to precisely control the features of the nanoparticles, resulting in excellent catalytic activity for water splitting.”<h2>What they did</h2>The researchers found that aiming a beam of ions at the electrode while simultaneously exsolving metal nanoparticles onto the electrode’s surface allowed them to control several properties of the resulting nanoparticles.“Through ion-matter interactions, we have successfully engineered the size, composition, density, and location of the exsolved nanoparticles,” the team writes in&nbsp;Energy &amp; Environmental Science.For example, they could make the particles much smaller — down to 2 billionths of a meter in diameter — than those made using conventional thermal exsolution methods alone. Further, they were able to change the composition of the nanoparticles by irradiating with specific elements. They demonstrated this with a beam of nickel ions that implanted nickel into the exsolved metal nanoparticle. As a result, they demonstrated a direct and convenient way to engineer the composition of exsolved nanoparticles.“We want to have multi-element nanoparticles, or alloys, because they usually have higher catalytic activity,” Yildiz says. “With our approach, the exsolution target does not have to be dependent on the substrate oxide itself.” Irradiation opens the door to many more compositions. “We can pretty much choose any oxide and any ion that we can irradiate with and exsolve that,” says Yildiz.The team also found that ion irradiation forms defects in the electrode itself. And these defects provide additional nucleation sites, or places for the exsolved nanoparticles to grow from, increasing the density of the resulting nanoparticles.Irradiation could also allow extreme spatial control over the nanoparticles. “Because you can focus the ion beam, you can imagine that you could ‘write’ with it to form specific nanostructures,” says Wang. “We did a preliminary demonstration [of that], but we believe it has potential to realize well-controlled micro- and nano-structures.”The team also showed that the nanoparticles they created with ion irradiation had superior catalytic activity over those created by conventional thermal exsolution alone.Additional MIT authors of the paper are Kevin B. Woller, a principal research scientist at the Plasma Science and Fusion Center (PSFC), home to the equipment used for ion irradiation; Abinash Kumar PhD ’22, who received his PhD from the Department of Materials Science and Engineering (DMSE) and is now at Oak Ridge National Laboratory; and James M. LeBeau, an associate professor in DMSE. Other authors are Zhan Zhang and Hua Zhou of Argonne National Laboratory, and Iradwikanari Waluyo and Adrian Hunt of Brookhaven National Laboratory.<hr>This work was funded by the OxEon Corp. and MIT’s PSFC. The research also used resources supported by the U.S. Department of Energy Office of Science, MIT’s Materials Research Laboratory, and MIT.nano. The work was performed, in part, at Harvard University through a network funded by the National Science Foundation.

Artist’s representation of nanoparticles with different compositions created by combining two techniques: metal exsolution and ion irradiation. The different colors represent different elements, such as nickel, that can be implanted into an exsolved metal particle to tailor the particle’s compositions and reactivity. Image: Jiayue Wang

The work demonstrates control over key properties leading to better performance.

Team engineers nanoparticles using ion irradiation to advance clean energy and fuel conversion

Tandem solar cells based on perovskite semiconductors can convert sunlight into electricity more efficiently than conventional silicon solar cells.&nbsp;In order to bring this technology to market, stability and production processes must be further improved.&nbsp;Researchers from the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT) as well as the Helmholtz Imaging platforms at the German Cancer Research Center (DKFZ) and Helmholtz AI have now found a way to predict the quality of the perovskite layers and thus the solar cells: using machine learning and new artificial methods Intelligence (AI) allows this to be recognized during production from variations in light emission.&nbsp;The team reports on the results from which improved production processes can be derived in Advanced Materials (DOI: 10.1002/adma.202307160).Perovskite tandem solar cells combine a perovskite with a conventional solar cell, for example based on silicon.&nbsp;They are considered next-generation technology because, with an efficiency of currently more than 33 percent, they are much more efficient than conventional silicon solar cells - with inexpensive starting materials and simple manufacturing methods.&nbsp;The prerequisite for achieving this level of efficiency is a very high-quality and extremely thin perovskite layer, which is only a fraction of the thickness of a human hair.&nbsp;“One of the biggest challenges is to produce these high-quality so-called multicrystalline thin films using cost-effective and scalable processes without defects and holes,” explains tenure-track professor Ulrich W. Paetzold from the Institute of Microstructure Technology and the Light Engineering Institute of KIT.&nbsp;Even under apparently perfect conditions in the laboratory, unknown influences lead to fluctuations in the quality of the semiconductor layers: “This ultimately prevents the rapid start of industrial production of these highly efficient solar cells, which we so urgently need for the energy transition,” says Paetzold.<h2>AI finds hidden signs of a good coating</h2>In order to find out which factors influence the coating, an interdisciplinary team of perovskite solar cell experts from KIT teamed up with machine learning and explainable artificial intelligence (XAI) specialists from Helmholtz Imaging (at the DKFZ in Heidelberg) and Helmholtz AI ( at KIT).&nbsp;The researchers have developed AI methods that train and analyze so-called neural networks using a large data set.&nbsp;The data set includes video recordings of the photoluminescence of the perovskite thin films during the manufacturing process.&nbsp;Photoluminescence refers to the radiant emission of the semiconductor layers after excitation by an external light source.&nbsp;“Since even experts couldn’t see anything remarkable on the thin films, the idea arose to train an AI for machine learning (deep learning) to find hidden indicators of a good or bad coating in the millions of data from the videos,” explain Lukas Klein and Sebastian Ziegler from Helmholtz Imaging at the DKFZ. &nbsp; In order to filter and analyze the very broad information provided by deep learning AI, the researchers subsequently used methods of explainable artificial intelligence.<h2>“Blueprint for follow-up research”</h2>The result: In the experiment, the researchers were able to see that the photoluminescence varies during production and this influences the coating quality. “What was crucial in our work was that we specifically used XAI methods to see which factors would have to change for a high-quality solar cell,” said Klein and Ziegler. That is usually not the case. Most of the time, XAI is only used as a kind of guardrail to avoid errors when building AI models: “This is a paradigm shift, and the fact that we can systematically gain highly relevant findings in materials science in this way is new.” Because the answer is based on the variation of the Photoluminescence enabled the researchers to go further. After appropriate training of the neural networks, the AI was able to predict whether the solar cell would achieve low or high efficiency, depending on when and what variation in light emission occurred during production. “These are extremely exciting results,” says Ulrich W. Paetzold. “Thanks to the combined use of AI, we have an idea of which adjustments we need to make first in order to improve production. We can carry out our experiments in a more targeted manner and no longer have to search for a needle in a haystack in the dark. This is a blueprint for follow-up research, including for many other aspects in energy research and materials science.”<hr><h3>Original publication</h3>Lukas Klein, Sebastian Ziegler, Felix Laufer, Charlotte Debus, Markus Götz, Klaus Maier-Hein, Ulrich W. Paetzold, Fabian Isensee, Paul F. Jäger: Discovering Process Dynamics for Scalable Perovskite Solar Cell Manufacturing with Explainable AI. Advanced Materials, 2023. DOI: 10.1002/adma.202307160

With the support of AI methods, researchers want to improve the manufacturing processes for highly efficient perovskite solar cells (Photo: Amadeus Bramsiepe, KIT)

Artificial intelligence methods show researchers the way to improved manufacturing processes for highly efficient solar cells - a blueprint for other research fields

AI for Perovskite Solar Cells: Key to Better Production

In this episode, we dive into how MIT researchers have found a new way of efficiently leveraging the abundant carbon dioxide in the atmosphere to create clean, stable fuel capable of addressing Hydrogen’s shortcomings while still offering its core benefits!

Podcast: Converting CO2 To Clean Fuel

Maintenance teams and materials have to travel long distances to reach offshore wind turbines. Can drones take over transport tasks and relieve maintenance personnel? The German Aerospace Center (Deutsches Zentrum für Luft- und Raumfahrt; DLR) is investigating the possibilities and requirements together with the energy supplier Energie Baden-Württemberg AG (EnBW). In this context, an unmanned DLR small helicopter has now flown to a wind turbine and automatically communicated with it. Seven commercial drone manufacturers will follow up on the findings to further advance the technology developed at DLR. To this end, DLR and EnBW are organising the '<a href="https://www.enbw.com/renewable-energy/wind-energy/our-offshore-wind-farms/offshore-logistics-drones/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Offshore Drone Challenge'</a> (ODC) in June 2024 at the <a href="https://www.dlr.de/ux/en/desktopdefault.aspx/tabid-13303/29379_read-76977/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">National Experimental Test Center for Unmanned Aircraft Systems</a> in <a href="https://www.dlr.de/en/dlr/locations-and-offices/cochstedt" target="_blank">Cochstedt</a>.The wake turbulence of wind turbines can strongly affect drones. The drone requires a lot of power to compensate for the air turbulence. "For automated use in a wind farm, the drone must therefore exchange information with the turbines," says Sebastian Cain from <a href="https://www.dlr.de/ft/en/desktopdefault.aspx/tabid-1336/1837_read-32330/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">the DLR Institute of Flight Systems</a>, which is leading the project. It is important that the drone and the wind turbine 'understand' each other well. "The drone needs to find the optimum route autonomously. To do this, it needs data from the turbines and wind turbines may have to be stopped so that the drone can reach its destination safely." The interruption in turbine operation – and thus in power generation – needs to be as short as possible.<h2>Communication between wind farm system and superARTIS successfully demonstrated</h2>At the beginning of October 2023, the unmanned DLR small helicopter <a href="https://www.dlr.de/de/forschung-und-transfer/forschungsinfrastruktur/grossforschungsanlagen/superartis" target="_blank">superARTIS</a> took off at the EnBW wind farm in Schwienau (Lower Saxony). superARTIS included information on the operating status of the individual wind turbines, weather information and wake turbulence in the calculation of its flightpath. By means of communications interfaces, the aircraft announced its arrival at a wind turbine. A simulated control room approved the approach, and the controlled wind turbine was stopped. The aircraft was able to approach without danger. The turbine was then reactivated. Had the drone not received clearance, it would have automatically entered a holding pattern. For a realistic scenario, the researchers attached a payload to the aircraft. The test did not take place offshore but on land, to make it safer and easier to conduct the experiments. "However, the results can be transferred to offshore installations. The communication between the flying vehicle and the turbine was conceptualised for offshore operation and is being studied in simulations for this purpose," explains Sebastien Cain.<img src="https://s3-us-west-1.amazonaws.com/wevolver-project-images/froala%2F1699581191327-image-1600-89a9ce22ef9de5a5c8ca1ffcc8ec5c3b.jpeg" style="width: 766px;" class="fr-fic fr-dib">Together with the energy company EnBW, DLR is investigating whether the use of drones can simplify logistics for offshore wind turbines. Researchers from the DLR Institute of Flight Systems used the unmanned DLR superARTIS helicopter for flight tests. These tests were conducted as part of the 'Upcoming Drones Windfarm' project. Credit: DLR (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0)<h2 id="isPasted">Commercial enterprises benefit from research results</h2>The flight test was an important intermediate step in the 'Upcoming Drones Windfarm' (UDW) project organised by DLR and EnBW. The aim of the project is to find out the conditions and necessary steps for the realisation of drone operations, initially for the transport of materials, and subsequently also for passenger transport. The project also includes the 'Offshore Drone Challenge' (ODC), where drone manufacturers and service providers will present suitable solutions. The stakeholders will be able to benefit from the current research results. Companies Anavia, Flowcopter, Flying Basket, HyFly, NEXaero, Unmanned Helicopters and Volocopter were selected and will now present their technologies in Cochstedt during June 2024."We will see several firsts in terms of the number and size of the aircraft," says Sebastian Cain. "In addition, they will all contribute to making the Offshore Drone Challenge a venue for drone demonstrations. It will also create a space for an exchange on technology, business and regulatory matters." Michael Splett, Head of Offshore Operations at EnBW and a member of the National Drone Council of the German Federal Ministry for Digital and Transport (Bundesministerium für Digitales und Verkehr; BMDV), adds: "Offshore wind energy is indispensable for the energy transition and a sustainable energy supply. As operators, it is our task to bring together the two technologies of wind energy and heavy-lift drones. Accordingly, with the ODC we are taking an important step to further explore the realisation of future drone operations."<h2>Test flight maneouvres at the Offshore Drone Challenge in Cochstedt</h2>The Challenge in Cochstedt will focus on testing flight manoeuvres that are relevant to the operation and maintenance logistics for offshore wind farms. This includes software topics as well as design modifications to connect the 'drone' and 'wind farm' systems. The Challenge will be carried out on land, as this is significantly safer, simpler and more cost-effective than the subsequent application at sea. The seven drone manufacturers and service providers will be able put their technologies to the test during the Challenge, which will be held over two days. The various stages include tasks such as picking up and setting down a load as automatically as possible or flying beyond line of sight.<img src="https://s3-us-west-1.amazonaws.com/wevolver-project-images/froala%2F1699581095450-image-1600-8d391c8898893358433a98bded40d44b.jpeg" style="width: 766px;" class="fr-fic fr-dib">The participants of the Offshore Drone Challenge present their technologies in June 2024. The Offshore Drone Challenge will take place at DLR's National Experimental Test Center for Unmanned Aircraft Systems in Cochstedt. Credit: EnBWIn addition to the DLR Institute of Flight Systems in <a href="https://www.dlr.de/en/dlr/locations-and-offices/braunschweig" target="_blank">Braunschweig</a> and the National Experimental Test Center for Unmanned Aircraft Systems, the <a href="https://www.dlr.de/lv/en/desktopdefault.aspx/tabid-18931/30340_read-83666/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">DLR Institute of Air Transport</a> in <a href="https://www.dlr.de/en/dlr/locations-and-offices/hamburg" target="_blank">Hamburg</a> is also involved in the Upcoming Drones Windfarm project.The project is being funded by the <a href="https://www.bmwk.de/Navigation/EN/Home/home.html" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Climate Action</a> (Bundesministerium für Wirtschaft und Klimaschutz; BMWK).<h3 id="isPasted">Safe operation of unmanned aircraft systems</h3>The aim of the <a href="https://www.dlr.de/en/ft" target="_blank">research and development work</a> at the Institute of Flight Systems is the simple and safe operation of Unmanned Aircraft Systems (UAS) under complex conditions – challenging weather conditions, obstacle-rich flight environments and interactions with other traffic. One focus is on unmanned cargo transport, together with the development of hardware and software components and the necessary approvals. For this purpose, the Institute operates several unmanned aerial vehicles as test systems.<h3>DLR National Test Center in Cochstedt</h3>The <a href="https://www.dlr.de/en/images/institutes-1/national-experimental-test-center-for-unmanned-aircraft-systems" target="_blank">DLR National Experimental Test Center for Unmanned Aircraft Systems</a> is located in Cochstedt. The testing centre allows networking between interested parties and enables the further development of technologies for Unmanned Aircraft Systems (UAS). The test site in Saxony-Anhalt is accessible to users from start-ups through to the established air transport industry for research and testing. It also acts as an incubator and enabler for start-ups and SMEs. In Cochstedt, UAS technologies can be tested under real conditions before they find their way into everyday use.

The test flight with the unmanned DLR superARTIS helicopter was an important milestone for the 'Upcoming Drones Windfarm' project. The project, which is being carried out by the DLR Institute of Flight Systems together with the energy company EnBW, focuses on the question of whether drones can take over transport tasks for offshore wind farms and relieve maintenance personnel. Credit: DLR (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0)

Logistics for offshore wind farms could be simplified with the use of drones. DLR is working with energy supplier EnBW to determine requirements and possibilities.

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