CENER opens its Solar Energy Laboratories to Researchers and Companies through RISEnergy Project

The National Renewable Energy Centre (CENER) opens its advanced solar energy laboratories, inviting researchers and companies to collaborate and access these facilities within the framework of the RISEnergy project. This project is aligned with the European Green Pact, which is a European Commission initiative that aims to transform the European Union (EU) economy to be sustainable, competitive and resource efficient. Announced in December 2019, this pact seeks to address current climate and environmental challenges through a series of political, legislative and economic actions and aims to achieve zero net greenhouse gas emissions by 2050.

RISEnergy Project and Solar Energy

RISEnergy seeks to foster a robust European ecosystem involving industry, research organizations and funding bodies, focused on the development of innovative energy technologies and concepts. The project is designed to improve the economic performance of emerging energy technologies, with a special focus on solar energy. The consortium includes 69 involved organizations from 22 countries (Figure 1), all with extensive experience in all types of energy technologies from industry, universities and research organizations.

The objective of the project is to initiate a coordinated, long-term research effort between leading private companies and research institutions with common expertise related to energy technologies to identify and promote ways to scale up technologies within the EU.

CENER within the project

CENER collaborates in the project and makes available 3 physical and virtual infrastructures that can be used by the industry. Each of them is described below:

• CENER Coating, Structuring and Characterization Laboratory (COATLAB)

This infrastructure consists of several techniques for the deposition of thin films, for the nano and microstructuring of different surfaces, lasers for ablation and thermal processes and assemblies for the characterization of optical, surface and electrical properties. The infrastructure is dedicated to the development of new materials and surfaces for energy applications.

• CENER’s Simulation Environment for Solar Energy Systems (SESES)

This infrastructure includes a set of software packages for detailed and high precision simulation for specific components and systems of any type of solar energy systems, including simulations considering environmental conditions.

– TONATIUH is an open source software for the simulation of optical systems by ray tracing method. This software is appropriated for estimation of the available solar resource, including complex terrain and configurations.

– CSTLibrary is CENER’s own Modelica library for the simulation of solar thermal, concentrated solar power and storage. This library allows to perform both stationary and dynamic simulations.

– This tool offers long-term, high-frequency synthetic climatological time series adjusted to the specific climatological and geographical conditions of the location of interest. Synthetic annual time series such as typical meteorological years and plausible years, can also be provided.

– SIMPV, this software is a proprietary tool for simulating the performance of photovoltaics plants without configuration or composition restrictions, as usual in commercial software, based on high temporal resolution simulations and detailed models of the complete photovoltaic plant and its components.

• Accredited photovoltaic component testing laboratory, indoor and outdoor testing in moderate climate (SOLPVLAB)

Accredited testing laboratory (for the main standards of the sector) by the IEC for the application of specific protocols for the characterization and aging of photovoltaic components (modules, trackers, inverters…). In addition, CENER also offers access to a custom-designed configuration for the quantification of soiling and damage of cleaning systems on photovoltaic modules. Finally, CENER offers its outdoor test field, which consists of more than 600 m² for outdoor testing of photovoltaics components (photovoltaic modules, trackers, inverters, etc.).

More information about the project

Those interested in accessing CENER’s solar energy laboratories can submit their applications through the RISEnergy portal. This access will facilitate advanced research and development of efficient and cost-effective photovoltaic technologies.

For more information and to submit applications, a Portal of the project RISEnergy exists, or it is possible to contact directly the CENER team at info@cener.com.