summary
The European Union has set a series of targets towards fulfilling its long-term energy strategy, including a transition to renewable energy sources, such as solar technologies. However, increasing the use of solar power by adding ever more PV panels creates challenges as well, due to space constraints, public acceptance issues for some applications, required materials and lack of sustainable end-of-life treatments.
DIRECT aims to develop new materials for new solar technologies in the form of surfaces that capture both diffuse and direct sunlight, and then direct light towards commercial solar panels. Thereby, it enhances the yield of new and existing photovoltaics while using already-existing surface areas such as building facades. Compared to existing solar technology, DIRECT material composition, deposition and assembly can be highly simplified. It has therefore potential to reduce environmental impact, costs of production and recycling.
The project is led by the University of Twente (UT) and involves multiple faculties from the UT, as well as companies and energy communities. KiTeS researchers use approaches from constructive technology assessment to examine in a prospective manner the socio-technical embedding of this emerging technology for possible applications, such as the building sector and agrivoltaics, as well as what could be wider environmental, geopolitical and social implications related to these new solar configurations and the envisaged materials.
partners
The DIRECT project is funded by NWO (-KIC), project website: Diffuse Irradiance Redirector for Efficient ConcenTration (DIRECT) | NWO
The consortium includes an interdisciplinary team from the UT (Project leader: Rebecca Saive), Next2Sun, Energiecoöperatie Haaksbergen and others.
Project duration: 1 May 2022 - 20 April 2027.
WHO's working on this project
Contact: Efi Nakopoulou
