Energy Storage

CIDETEC will participate as a speaker in the second edition of the technical seminar ‘Energy Storage: technologies and projects” organized by Energética XXI.

The energy storage market is expanding. The many possible applications of these systems are leading to the rapid development of technology and a drop in the price of installations. Batteries and energy accumulators are now key for optimizing consumption and renewable generation installations. Similarly, they will play an essential role in the development of large-scale electric mobility and the efficiency and safety of smart grids.

Both for large-scale applications and for small installations, Spain counts on international reference projects for electrical energy storage. The STORE, G3A Research, Orona IDeO or Alia2 projects are already underway with highly positive results. As for small projects, off grid installations that combine renewable energy, batteries and generators are spreading rapidly because of the significant savings they yield.

Following last year’s success, Energética XXI is organizing the second edition of the technical conference ‘Energy Storage: technologies and projects’, which will address the main existing technologies as well as the major initiatives in this area in our country. Companies and key research centres will take part in an event that will bring together all the main stakeholders and industry professionals.

In this seminar, Oscar Miguel, Director of the Energy Division of CIDETEC will be giving a presentation where he will be setting out the criteria and factors to be taken into account when facing product development in the field of energy storage -batteries and fuel cells- as well as CIDETEC’s recent experience in this area.

The event will take place on 30 September at the Hotel Vincci SoMa (C / Goya, 79 – Madrid), from 09:00 to14: 30.

Programme 

Registration

Within the ORION project, a new family of materials has been developed combining inorganic nanomaterials and ionic liquids for its application in the field of energy storage and generation.

The ORION project (Ordered Inorganic-Organic Hybrids using Ionic Liquids for Emerging Applications), led by CIDETEC, has recently been selected as a “Success Story” by the European Commission. The success in achieving the scientific and technical objectives raised has enabled this recognition, an achievement that just over 2% of the projects approved so far have achieved.

ORION’s main objective has been the development of a new family of hybrid materials based on the combination of inorganic nanomaterials and ionic liquids. Research has been focused on the generation of these materials for their application in the field of storage and power generation, achieving significant advances in technologies such as lithium-ion batteries and photovoltaics. In this sense, the materials developed under this project have helped increase both the capacity and the speed of battery charge that is of great advantage in the case of applications such as mobile devices or electric vehicles. In the field of photovoltaics, these materials have been used for the manufacturing of Dye-sensitized solar cells with durability in excess of 10,000 hours in accelerated degradation test, resulting in an improvement of over 30% when compared to the state of the art. They have also contributed to the development of perovskite-based solar cells, materials that have recently revolutionized the photovoltaic arena, reaching efficiencies of 15% and leading third generation photovoltaic technologies. Having achieved efficiencies comparable to those obtained when using 2nd generation photovoltaic technologies based on thin layers of semiconductors but with a much lower economic and energy costs, means a breakthrough in the race to marketing this emerging photovoltaic technology.

Results

As clear indicators of the scientific-technological impact the ORION project has had, worthy of mention are the 11 patent applications filed and the more than 75 publications in international scientific journals such as Nature Photonics prestigious, NanoLetters or Advanced Materials. Also, the inclusion of the products developed in the catalogue of some of the industrial partners such as Cegasa (Spain), Johnson Matthey (UK), Fiat (Italy), SOLVIONIC (France) and Solaronix (Switzerland), is a clear sign of the great socio-economic impact the scientific-technical progress of the ORION project has had. Moreover, it is important to note that Centro Ricerche Fiat has undertaken the construction of demonstrators on automotive accessories that combine solar cells and the batteries developed in the project. Specifically, they have built a dimming rear-view mirror and a courtesy light for cars that are activated when the doors are opened.

To quote Dr. Ramon Tena-Zaera, Head of Unit Energy Materials at CIDETEC and project coordinator: “The guided combination of inorganic nanomaterials with organic molecules in the same material allows for the combination of the main benefits of each chemistry”. In this respect, the results achieved in the ORION project have clearly met the expected targets, thus opening promising paths for future developments related to the production, storage and energy efficiency fields. “

Project details


Project website:

https://cidetec.es/ORION/index.html

Article of the European commission:

http://ec.europa.eu/research/infocentre/article_en.cfm?artid=32202