India’s Vikram Solar has signed a collaboration agreement with French Alternatie Energies and Atomic Energy Commission (CEA) for innovative technology research and development in solar energy.
Vikram Solar said in a statement. “Under the MoU, CEA will share their know-how and technologies in the field of solar energy, storage, smart grid and thermal efficiency while Vikram Solar will apply these technologies in large volume manufacturing with a wider objective of improving solar photovoltaic cells and modules to perform at record-efficiency in energy conversion and simultaneously developing battery solutions by increasing their energy storage capacity.
Other advanced research and development areas of collaboration will include crystallization and wafering, mono and bi-facial modules, agri-photovoltaics and solar mobility as well as exploring new competitive materials in order to reduce costs.
The CEA carries out research on thermal and photovoltaic solar energy, in support of industrial companies in the sector. In the field of solar thermal energy, the CEA has, within the National Institute of Solar Energy (INES), an R&D platform dedicated to the optimisation of solar thermal systems.
Currently CEA’s research is focusing on improving the output and reducing the costs of photovoltaic modules, and also anticipating the problems of integration in the grid which will arise following a massive insertion of renewables in the energy mix.
This work, carried out at INES, makes use of its technological platform to manufacture cells and modules and its software platform to simulate the behaviour of a future grid with renewable energy sources, as well as storage and consumption equipments