Greentech Alliance’s Industry Spotlight Series highlights members across all sectors represented in our community, with the aim of bringing great awareness to the sustainability challenges of the current and future generations. This is the third blog in the series. Our first two blogs focused on biodiversity conservation and solutions to plastic waste.
Solar is often the first technology that people think of when they hear ‘renewable energy.’ Images that immediately come to mind are photovoltaic (PV) cells mounted in fields or on rooftops. Likewise, a lot of conversations around solar in popular media focus on how the power of the sun can be transformed into electricity to power people’s homes and businesses.
But solar can provide more than just electricity. It can also be packaged into new energy service models that make renewables more accessible to residential and commercial customers, regardless of whether property is owned or rented. And the benefits of solar don’t just come in the form of traditional solar cells.
For example, existing solar panels can be retrofitted with new technology to maximize efficiency, provide renewable heating and cooling, and harvest water for district heating or hot water applications. Solar technologies can sit on balconies, serve as smart windows, float in bodies of water, and even be incorporated into pavement!
As new solar technologies hit the market, their impact and reach can be maximized by complementary solutions to drive down costs, improve performance with digital tools, and build community engagement. New energy-as-a-service solutions, software platforms to monitor and promote asset health, and community energy projects are helping consumers—and prosumers—of all types access more sustainable energy in an equitable way.
Greentech Alliance companies across the globe offer all these solutions and more. To get a better sense of the wide range of solar applications, as well as enabling technologies, we posed the following to our member companies: “When people hear solar, they often think renewable electricity generated from solar panels. But there are so many more solar technologies and uses for solar energy. What are some unique solar-powered solutions that advance global sustainability goals, from both social and environmental perspectives?”
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Company: Croydon Community Energy
FoundeR: Connie Muir
Mission: Croydon Community Energy implements renewable energy generation and low-carbon technologies in the local area, to cut both greenhouse gas emissions and energy bills, driven by community ownership and empowerment.
Connie on the unique benefits of community energy: “Community energy is unique because it allows community ownership of panels and raises money directly for the community. Through community share offers, local people invest in their community buildings, delivering financial and carbon savings, whilst getting a return on their investment at the same time. This also provides resilience for the community buildings against price hikes.”
COMPANY: DRYAD NETWORKS
Co-Founder & CEO: Carsten Brinkschulte
Mission: Dryad provides ultra-early detection of wildfires.
Carsten on solar-powered sensors for wildfire detection: “Dryad's Silvanet is a solar-powered wireless sensor network for the forest, enabling ultra-early wildfire detection as well as health and growth monitoring applications to protect and restore the world's largest carbon sink.”
COMPANY: ECOGLAZE
Co-Founders: Matthias Trost & Niall Killilea
Mission: Ecoglaze develops smart window films to protect buildings & vehicles from solar heat with the flip of a switch.
Matthias on the passive cooling of solar technology: “I'm inspired by both the usage of solar energy, as well as the power and impact of its intentional absence. To be specific: passive cooling technologies and the ability to reflect only selected parts of the solar spectrum.”
Company: ENVIRIA
Founder& CEO: Melchior Schulze Brock
Mission: ENVIRIA offers companies easy access to scalable energy-as-a-service concepts and innovative solar-centric projects, enabling them to effectively pursue their sustainability agenda, reduce energy costs, develop new revenue opportunities, and make their own contribution to the energy transition.
Melchior on B2B solar solutions: “Businesses are often overlooked despite being responsible for approximately 80 percent of total power consumed. But the perceived battle between ecology and economy in the energy market is ancient history now! Our solution: innovative solar-centric projects, structured and built on EPC (Engineering, Procurement, and Construction) expertise and financial engineering concepts, and designed for the unique needs of the B2B sector – all from a single source. With ENVIRIA, entire segments previously excluded can now actively participate in and benefit from the energy transition, enabling B2B participants to take green efforts into their own hands.”
Company: HelioRec
Founder: Polina Vasilenko
Mission: HelioRec is building simple, powerful floating solar power plants.
Polina on the benefits of novel floating PV plants: “HelioRec’s team invented a unique floating system with ‘hydro-lock’ feature. The ‘hydro-lock’ works as a ballast, keeping water inside a floater positioned on water; this water gives additional mass and, consequently, additional stability. HelioRec’s floating solar power plant plants are usually located near the shoreline where half of the global population lives. There is a twofold advantage:
1) the power plants do not occupy land, so the land can be used for other purposes (agriculture, storage, etc.);
2) efficiency of solar panels is 13-18 percent higher because of the cooling effect that comes from water.”
COMPANY: PLATIO
CO-FounderS:Imre Sziszák & Miklós Ilyés
Mission: PLATIO Solar manufactures PLATIO SOLAR PAVER, a sustainable building material.
Imre and Miklós on incorporating solar into sustainable building materials: PLATIO solar paver is a unique building-integrated photovoltaic product (BIPV), as it is an energy-generating paver with built-in solar panels. This is a green, sustainable product because it both generates energy and recycles plastic, using recycled plastic waste as its base. The solar paver can be placed on terraces, driveways, rooftops, or other sunny flat surfaces. PLATIO intends to pave the way to a green, carbon-neutral future by providing clean energy for cities, buildings, homes, and companies. As a sustainable building material, it is our mission to help achieve net-zero emissions.
Company: Skyfri
Founders: Pratik Ghoshal, Aslan Shams, Petter S. Berge, & Murshid M. Ali
Mission: Skyfri is automating solar asset operations.
Murshid on solar’s ability to alleviate hunger and poverty: “As the global explosion in solar has led to a revolution in distributed renewable energy assets, remote villages and farms can now be powered by solar. Unique solar-powered solutions include those related to corporate and industrial smaller power plants, often floating or placed on roof-tops. These solutions can power food production and more, which can lift millions out of hunger and poverty. Skyfri is the technology that takes care of all of those assets.”
Company: Sunovate
Co-Founders: Glen Ryan & Cesira Leigh
Mission: Sunovate is a clean-tech solution based on high efficiency hybrid solar photovoltaic modules. By day, they generate renewable heat and electricity, and by night, renewable cooling.
Glen and Cesira on new cooling tech and heating applications of solar PV: “At Sunovate, we saw the opportunity to leverage the spectacular growth of solar PV to offer a product that adds to the PV value stack. The Sunovate system drives air through its thermal panel to cool the cells within the PV module evenly. The cooler cells produce more electricity and extend module life by reducing the long-term PV cell thermal degradation. The heated air is then captured for use directly through space heating or indirectly in hot water preparation and air-sourced heat pump integration. Sunovate further addresses the concerns of competing roof space or agricultural land use through the high efficiency output and innovative packaging solution like Sunovate’s glasshouse and district heating applications. When delivered with seasonal storage, we offer communities the ability to deliver greater local energy, food, and employment resilience.”
Company: Wedosolar GmbH
Co-Founder: Karolina Attspodina
Mission: Wedosolar provides smart solar sight protection for balconies, saving customers up to 25% on electricity bills and 600kg of CO2 yearly.
Karolina on democratizing solar solutions for renters: “When people hear about solar, they instantly think of rooftop installations or solar parks, but there are so many more ways to use solar in our daily life. For us, it is important to democratize solar so no one sees it as a commodity but rather a simple and available product that anyone can use. Our aim is to continuously develop smart vertical solar solutions for self-installation that give everyone a chance to have renewables in their home, no matter if the property is rented or owned. Our current solution is a totally new product that serves as solar sight protection on balcony railings. We are also considering innovative rental models and ways to supply solar to households via large companies so the sets would be subsidized.”