In partnership with Brazil's leading universities and institutes, the company's R&D seeks increasingly efficient and tropicalized solutions for the clean energy sector.
With the premise of strengthening the clean energy market in Brazil, BYD Energy has established itself as one of the main players in this sector and has already invested more than R$ 50 million in Research & Development (R&D) in the country in order to further improve solutions for this important and promising national market.
Part of the funds will go towards studies carried out in partnership with Brazil's leading universities and institutes, such as Unicamp, Unesp, CTI Renato Archer, UFSC and the Eldorado Institute, among others. The alliance is part of the Program to Support the Technological Development of the Semiconductor Industry (PADIS), which encourages technical and scientific production through research, in which undergraduate, master's, doctoral and post-doctoral students work on a pre-defined project according to BYD's technical interests.
Some of the lines of research are aimed at developing technologies based on the climate of the Brazilian market. In this regard, the company has also invested R$ 7 million in equipment for its first plant, which has a complete weather station dedicated to studying the most diverse types of photovoltaic modules on tropical soil and which provides data to a central supervisory system, with software responsible for uniting all the information that is monitored remotely.
"Our research studies the effect of tropicalization on the photovoltaic modules produced by BYD Energy do Brasil and is based on tests that simulate their application in different regions of the country," says Rodrigo Garcia, R&D manager at BYD Energy.
"The high volume of projects carried out in partnership with our R&D department shows our enthusiasm for the market and how the sector is promising and can grow exponentially, with increasingly efficient and specific solutions. We have already reached the milestone of 2.3 million photovoltaic panels produced in the country and we expect to continue contributing more and more to the growth of this sector in Brazil," says Garcia.
Many of the projects carried out in partnership with educational institutions are presented at renowned events in the sector that show the market the impacts of clean energy and new technologies developed. Recently, one of these projects was exhibited at the 40th European Photovoltaic Solar Energy Conference and Exhibition (EUPVSEC) - the largest European conference for research into photovoltaic technologies and applications, held in Lisbon - by Unicamp student Mendelsson Rainer Macedo Neves. Entitled "The influence of salinity on the potential degradation induced in monocrystalline silicon photovoltaic modules", the study analyzed the effect of salinity on crystalline silicon modules and the impacts of installing photovoltaic modules in areas close to the sea.
Another example is the project shown at the XXI B-MRS Meeting, held in Maceió (AL), a traditional forum that brings together scientists, engineers and students from academia and industry to discuss state-of-the-art discoveries and perspectives in Materials Science. This is "Advanced perovskite materials for monolithic high-efficiency tandem solar cells with crystalline silicon", developed by CTI Renato Archer student Kayo de Oliveira Vieira, in partnership with BYD's R&D team.
Presented at the same event, the project entitled "Thermal stability of BiI3 is the result of research by student Natália Coutinho and was developed thanks to BYD's partnership with Unicamp's Gleb Wataghin Physics Institute. In this case, it is an analysis of the thermal stability of bismuth triiodide (BiI) as a possible candidate to replace PBI2 in the synthesis of lead-free compounds in perovskite-like materials for photovoltaic applications.
As a result of this same partnership, the study "Improving the efficiency of Si-based solar cells by applying thin films of materials" was presented by student Otávio José de Oliveira. The work analyzes the possibility of improving the efficiency of Si-based solar cells by applying thin films of down-conversion materials. These materials have the property of converting high-energy photons into low-energy photons from europium (Eu).
"The volume of projects presented in partnership with BYD only shows our enthusiasm for the market and how the sector is promising and can grow exponentially with increasingly advanced and efficient solutions," Garcia concludes.
