Art meets photo voltaic: These Dutch startups are making photovoltaics sexy

One of the perfect methods to make buildings greener is to cowl them with photo voltaic panels — turning properties, workplaces, and factories into clear vitality turbines. 

Rooftop photo voltaic is especially well-liked within the Netherlands as a result of, nicely, it’s a tiny nation with numerous folks, the place each sq. inch counts. Adding photo voltaic panels to the empty exterior of a constructing, somewhat than occupying swathes of countryside, merely is sensible.  

Rooftop makes up the biggest variety of photo voltaic installations within the EU, and demand is skyrocketing. But, whereas photo voltaic panels will probably be an more and more frequent function of structure going ahead, for some they are an eyesore.

However, because the market booms, an rising cohort of Dutch startups is specialising in photo voltaic roofs and facades that not solely look superior, however do the energy-generating bit too. 

“The sun sees solar modules, we see art,” says Jeroen Boumans, architect at Eindhoven University spin-off ZigZagSolar. The startup has designed a corrugated facade for buildings that it claims harnesses twice as a lot vitality as a normal flat photo voltaic wall, and 25% greater than a photo voltaic roof. Its installations look extra like a mural than anything.

“Regular blue and black PV cells are not that attractive,” says architect Ajax Abreu Garcia of UNStudio. In 2017, the architectural follow based Solar Visuals, to convey full color, sturdy print panels to the market. “These facades generate electricity, but they are also beautiful,” says Garcia.

The Solar Visuals product consists of 4 layers: a constructive again, a layer with PV cells, then a print, and at last a glass plate. 

Kameloen Solar, based mostly within the small metropolis of Roosendaal, provides color to photo voltaic panels utilizing its patented ColourBlast know-how.  

“We now have a colour library with about four thousand possibilities,” says Guust Verpaalen, the proprietor of Kameleon Solar. “If people say to us: we want terracotta, then we ask: what colour?”

Many of those inventive twists on photo voltaic tech fall beneath what’s often known as building-integrated photovoltaics (BIPV). In easy phrases, that is when photo voltaic panels are built-in into the constructing itself, not mounted on it. 

A pioneer on this regard is Solarix, whose panels have been used to create what’s slated to be the primary constructing on the planet to be geared up with a photo voltaic facade — the headquarters of engineering agency Kuijpers in Helmond, accomplished in 2018 (verify the featured picture). 

While Solarix is specializing in facades, Dutch scale-up Exasun is one in all many corporations now offering built-in rooftop photo voltaic panels that are virtually invisible to the bare eye. Its X-Roof system is used as a substitute for or together with ceramic roof tiles. 

In a means, integrating photo voltaic panels into the constructed atmosphere is symbolic of how embedded this know-how is turning into in trendy structure and design. 

The future is vibrant

The Dutch authorities lately introduced it’s ringfencing as much as €412mn in funding for next-generation photo voltaic applied sciences, together with photo voltaic facades, photo voltaic glass, and BIPV. 

The capital will probably be directed to SolarNL, a consortium that appears to nurture the expansion of photo voltaic PV manufacturing within the Netherlands and Europe. Many of the startups we’ve simply talked about are a part of this consortium. 

Those who aren’t ought to not fear although. The outlook for photo voltaic startups is wanting vibrant regardless. Total funding in European photo voltaic startups is up 398% on final 12 months, with corporations receiving $6bn in backing by the top of May 2023. This compares to $1.2bn raised by the identical level in 2022, says analysis by distributor Avnet Abacus.

As money pours into photo voltaic tech, there’s by no means been a greater time for startups to discover methods to harness the facility of the solar in model.