ROLLING SOLAR

Closed

Germany, Belgium and The Netherlands are internally connected by a total of 1 million kilometer of roads. This represents a huge area of built environment that can be used for renewable energy generation by integrating solar cell materials into road pavements and road furniture. On the long term, multi-GW scale implemention is considered feasible. As electric driving is rapidly developing, and also the use of intelligent traffic control systems is growing, an increasing amount of this energy produced in the public infrastructure can be used locally. Moreover, it can enhance secure operation of critical control systems independent of external power failures, and on remote locations local energy generation can be more cost effective. Promising demonstrators have already been realized where crystalline solar cells are incorporated into bicycle paths (world’s first by TNO SolaRoad, NL), roads (by Colas, F), smaller demo projects (Solar RoadWays, US) and sound barriers. However, costs of such systems are still high, not only because they have not yet developed towards the stage of standard high volume products, but also because they are based on brittle silicon solar cells in the form of small tiles. These require severe mechanical protection and much assembly. This project aims to reduce cost by using flexible (and thus less breakable) thin film solar sheets, and by more effective integration. Within the EMR region, a cluster of world class research institutes (several of which are collaborating in the NL/B/D public-private partnership Solliance) has a strong position in the development of thin film solar cell materials which can be produced on flexible materials in lengths up to many hundreds of meters. The region also has outstanding industrial clusters of R2R equipment manufacturers and production, of chemical industry producing innovative materials for flexible products, paving, encapsulation, and construction, of testing and certification facilities. Implementation of PV in built infrastructure is supported by SEAC (NL) and EnergyVille (B). SEAC is already involved in projects where sound barriers are realized with integrated crystalline solar modules. The 13 private project partners are listed below. A total budget of € 1 million was foreseen for industrial partners. Although Interreg suggested to reduce the project budget, it also actively proposed new partners (ISAC, AC&CS, Solarge). By rearrangement of budgets, only very limited increase in EFRO budget is now requested (68k), while private contribution is increased by 167k€. Moreover, Van Eycken (B) collaborates with Soltech, and ELMOS (D) with RWTH (letters are uploaded). Hanergy (China/USA) will supply flexible thin film PV. Validation will be accelerated through a project advisory committee of stakeholders: EnergieAgentur NRW, BAST (D) Rijkswaterstaat, Prorail (NL), Confederatie Bouw, Flux50, OCW, Flanders Bike Valley ,Agentschap W&V (B). Support letters are uploaded. The project aims to catalyze a lasting cross border collaboration between this industry, research and stakeholders on PV, materials, manufacturing, installation, grid, and road infrastructure, through development, dissemination and validation of knowledge. Goal is to technically enable local manufacturers and building and construction companies to realize cost effective integration of long lengths of solar cell materials into public infrastructure. As a result, large scale durable electricity generation without additional land use will be enabled close to point of use. For example, PV integrated in all 35000km of Dutch bicycle road would generate 15TWh/yr, equivalent to a CO2 reduction in the order of 5 million tonnes/year. A number of provinces, cities and commercial entities (NL, B) are already developing plans for demonstration projects on solar energy generation on and along road infrastructure (>4M€ before 2022) . This Interreg project will bring together the required consortium partners and enable them to realize such demonstration projects more effectively. It will do so by developing and testing the required thin film solar module materials and, based on the existing experience with silicon solar cells, by developing more effective strategies to incorporate them into road pavements and -furniture. The project will demonstrate real size test elements at Thor Campus (Genk) and Wijk van Morgen (between Aachen and Heerlen), and promote validation in infrastructural investments. However, actual infrastructure investments will be treated as pro memori in the here proposed EMR project. Four work packages are foreseen in collaboration with regional SME’s: 1) Adaptation of flexible PV modules, 2) Integration and testing of solar modules in road construction elements 3) Smart electrical interconnection, and 4) Validation and industrialization.

Medium