Printing of ultra-thin, flexible perovskite solar cells and its commercial application
The impact of buildings to European final energy consumption has been assessed at 40%, making the building stock responsible for 36% of CO2 emissions. The reduction of energy consumption in buildings is the focus of the European 2020 strategy. EU’s essential policy instruments that encourage energy efficiency, retrofit measures and renewable production are: the Energy Efficiency Directive (EED), the Energy Performance of Building Directive (EPBD and EPBD recast) and the Renewable Energy Directive (RED). One of the major initiatives promoted by the EPBD recast is the implementation of nearly zero energy buildings (NZEBs) as the building objective from 2018 onwards. In the US, as well, several states’ strategic plans stipulate that all new residential buildings must be zero-net-energy (ZNE) by 2020, all new commercial buildings - by 2030, and 50% of existing commercial buildings must be retrofitted to ZNE by 2030. However currently available technologies pose challenges to reaching these objectives in cost-effective way. As an example, photovoltaic devices which bring high hopes and expectations to NZEBs, can currently only cover roofs, not allowing to optimally use the majority of building surface. They only generate energy from direct natural light and cannot be used on existing buildings without the need of severe structure modifications. Similar challenges (compliance with regulations, search for optimal efficiency-cost ratio, need for constant performance improvement while maintaining aesthetic features) are also faced by many other industries (automobile, aeronautics, consumer goods – electronics, clothing, etc.)

Saule Sp. z o. o. (Saule Technologies) aims to address these challenges by introducing the first-on-the-market perovskite solar cells (PSC) which are efficient, flexible, semi-transparent and inexpensive solar panels.