EPFL PV-lab

✨ A fantastic moment sharing knowledge! ✨ With Paul Rémondeau, I had the pleasure of presenting the exciting activities happening at the EPFL PV-lab on #BIPV development and demo monitoring as part of the remarkable SPHINX project! 🚀 It’s inspiring to collaborate and exchange ideas with such a vibrant community, pushing the boundaries of innovation in renewable energy and integrated photovoltaics. 🌞🏗️ As the year wraps up, I’d like to wish everyone wonderful end-of-year celebrations 🎉 and an inspiring New Year 2025 filled with new opportunities, success, and creativity! 🌟 Here’s to shaping a brighter, more sustainable future together! 🌍💡 #RenewableEnergy #Innovation #Collaboration #SPHINX

🏆 🎓 Today, Christophe Ballif, head of the Photovoltaics and Thin-Films Electronics Lab, received a Doctor Honoris Causa in a ceremony at the University of Ljubljana in Slovenia! One of the leading scientists and engineers in the field of #photovoltaics and #energy solutions, Professor Ballif's collaboration with the University of Ljubljana involves many research projects, mentoring young researchers, and strengthening the links between the academic and industrial communities, significantly contributing to the school’s increased international recognition. The dean of the Faculty of Electrical Engineering at UL, Marko TOPIC, said: “Christophe Ballif has left an indelible mark on both the scientific community and on our faculty with his outstanding scientific work and his commitment to the development of sustainable energy solutions. The title of Doctor Honoris Causa reflects our deep respect for his contribution.”  Congratulations! https://lnkd.in/ec4jnnhY EPFL | EPFL Electrical And Micro Engineering

🏆 We are proud to announce that Prof. Dr. Christophe Ballif, Director of CSEM’s Sustainable Energy Activities, received the prestigious Doctor Honoris Causa from the University of Ljubljana on December 3, 2024, during the university's 105th-anniversary celebration. This honor recognizes Christophe’s exceptional contributions to science and his over 20 years of collaboration with the Faculty of Electrical Engineering. Together, we’ve advanced photovoltaic technologies, hosted researchers, and leveraged cutting-edge measurement systems to push the boundaries of innovation through impactful European initiatives. 🚀 👑As a global leader in sustainable energy, Christophe’s expertise spans high-efficiency photovoltaics, energy storage, and digital energy systems. His research has driven groundbreaking innovations, such as heterojunction solar cells, lightweight solar modules, and aesthetic solar surfaces. Notably, his work has enabled the industrialization of iconic technologies, including Tissot’s connected watches, while supporting the broader integration of solar energy into global energy systems. With over 600 publications, numerous patents, and membership in esteemed organizations like the L'Académie suisse des sciences techniques (SATW), Christophe’s contributions have shaped science, industry, and sustainability. Recognized as one of EPFL’s most highly cited researchers in 2024, he was also awarded the Becquerel Prize in 2016 for advancing high-efficiency photovoltaics. 👏 Congratulations, Christophe, on this well-deserved recognition. Your dedication continues to exemplify CSEM’s mission to innovate for a brighter, more sustainable future! #Innovation #SustainableEnergy #EnergyTransition #Photovoltaics #Collaboration

💡 Pushing Boundaries: Latest Milestone in Perovskite/Si Tandem Solar Cell Innovation! 🔬 A confirmed record and exciting new steps ahead: We've recently hit a new milestone by increasing the size of our tandem photovoltaic cell by 60 times, from 1 cm² to 60 cm²—now reaching 20% of the standard industrial size. Our technology delivers a certified light-to-electricity conversion efficiency of 28.9%, making these tandem cells among the most efficient in the world at this scale. 🏆 Why does this matter? Certified by Fraunhofer-Institut für Solare Energiesysteme ISE CalLab, our results confirm that this technology could be the future of solar energy, with high performance and competitive production costs. This paves the way for sustainable applications in space-limited contexts like rooftops, facades, and vehicles. ⚙️ Next steps: - We're gearing up for a significant leap by moving our equipment to a larger cleanroom. This ultra-clean environment will allow us to better control processes and further increase the size of the devices. - Additionally, we're investing in a vacuum deposition machine that combines advanced technologies. These innovations will enable us to continue making significant advancements and maintain our competitive edge in the field. 🔮 Our aim is to stabilize the production of large-sized cells and overcome the final challenges to bring this technology to market within the next 5 to 10 years. 👏 Kudos to the teams at EPFL PV-lab and CSEM for these outstanding results and for their commitment to a sustainable energy future! 🌍 A special shoutout to Lisa Champault, who graciously agreed to share her insights on this exciting topic!

Angelika Harter's and Kerem Artuk's nice work on novel mixed multi-step deposited self-assembled monolayers (SAMs) has been finally published. They developed different sequences of deposition steps for the hole-transporting SAMs alongside what we named "SAM infillers" and how they can be used in perovskite single-junctions, but also with the nicely submicron textured Cz wafers in Bernd Stannowski's lab at PVcomB / Helmholtz-Zentrum Berlin. If you're curious about what SAWSAW or SASA is all about, check it out : https://lnkd.in/eXSrPfgq Amran Al-Ashouri, Florian M., Orestis Karalis, Hannes Hempel, Rutger Schlatmann, Christophe Ballif, Steve Albrecht

🎉 Congratulations to Simon Zeder from the EPFL PV-lab on the successful defense of his PhD thesis “Advanced Modeling and Simulation of Luminescence Phenomena in Perovskite Semiconductors” under the supervision of Prof. Christophe Ballif and Dr U. Aeberhard. 🔎 In this thesis, a novel mathematical and computational framework has been developed for the simulation of photon recycling effects in semiconductor structures. Through a novel physical description of dipole emission from within absorbing media, coupled to a model for electronic transport, the full optoelectronic back-coupling of photon recycling could be analyzed. This allowed to directly quantify the impact of such mechanisms on the efficiencies of both light-emitting (LEDs) and light-absorbing (solar cells) devices, and to investigate its implications for device design.

On Monday, we had the great pleasure of Tonio Buonassisi visiting our labs and delivering one of his amazing talks on how robotics, machine learning, and other approaches can help develop better, more stable PV materials while saving time in the process. He will also give an invited talk this Thursday in the #AMADISTA symposium at the #MATSUS conference happening this week in Lausanne. Join us at the latest at 11.15 am in Lausanne, for the symposium organized by Philippe Schwaller, Tobias Stubhan, and Christian Wolff.

Yes! 🥳 So happy that I finally achieved this milestone in my life! It took many years, but was also full of newly learned wisdoms and mind-boggling challenges 🤓 No worries, I'll spare you another cringe cliché LinkedIn story here, just thrilled to share! 🤲

📰 Our latest research has just been published, focusing on the critical parameter of Performance Loss Rate (PLR) in photovoltaic (PV) systems. Accurately assessing the PLR is essential for understanding the long-term performance and reliability of PV installations, but challenges like uncertainty and lack of standardised methods persist. In this work, we introduce the multi-annual year-on-year (multi-YoY, or YoYo 🪀) approach, which reduces statistical uncertainty by comparing data across multiple years. Validated with synthetic data and real-world datasets from IEA PVPS - Photovoltaic Power Systems Programme Task 13, our approach delivers: ✅ Greater accuracy and precision ✅ A 10x reduction in confidence intervals (CI) ✅ Improved robustness against noise, dataset length variations, and missing data You can find the open-access article here: https://lnkd.in/e387CFaq The Python code is also shared in a GitHub repository archived in Zenodo: https://lnkd.in/eipGZhPx. Thank you to Christophe Ballif, Alessandro Virtuani, and our partners at EPFL PV-lab, 3S Swiss Solar Solutions AG, CSEM, and the Swiss Federal Office of Energy SFOE for their support.

Congratulations to Marie Courtant from EPFL PV-lab for the Best Oral Presentation Student Award at #EUPVSEC2024 in Vienna for her work on "Novel Colorimetry Approach for Building Integrated Photovoltaics" as part of the Increase project! #BIPV #SolarEnergy #SolarPower #Colorimetry #Award #SolarResearch