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Light management specialist Microsharp has become one of a handful of UK-based firms to win Applied Research grant funding from the Carbon Trust. Microsharp is using the grant to develop a cost-effective, highly-efficient solar concentrator, which works by focusing solar energy onto a base power generator, like a silicon cell.
Responding to a market demand for cheaper, lightweight solar concentrators, Microsharp is pioneering the use of optical film as the basis for a new concentrator system. Solar concentrator systems have previously required complex, costly components, but Microsharp’s film can be manufactured cheaply using a “reel-to-reel” process. The film itself will be able to self-clean and remove surface water condensation, reducing costs at both production and maintenance stages.
With the costs for solar concentrators reduced, applications can be run more efficiently, for example they could be used to create heating systems which can operate earlier in the day and for longer throughout the year. Although it is early days in the technical tests around the film and its mouldings, Microsharp has already received expressions of interest from firms keen to use this technology in their buildings, with the prospect that these concentrators will one day be installed on roof-tops, or even blinds on office block windows.
The Carbon Trust’s Garry Staunton comments:
“Recent studies by the Carbon Trust show that renewable energy could provide up to a fifth of the UK’s electricity needs by 2020, if emerging developments are given the right financial support now, so we’re excited to be supporting Microsharp’s work. Grants are a key part of the Carbon Trust’s work in encouraging low carbon innovation: through the Applied Research programme we’re backing technology that we think has huge carbon-saving potential, but which requires a further boost before it becomes a commercial reality. Our aim is to support the best emerging low carbon thinking, and bring the worlds of science and business closer together by converting theory into potential profit.”
Leading this work, Dr Nicholas Walker commented:
“Microsharp has taken a strategic decision to apply its knowledge of optical films and optical module designs to address novel approaches to sustainable energy technologies, including solar power and heating, improved use of natural lighting and high efficiency illumination. The Carbon Trust grant is a central part of this process and is allowing Microsharp to research and develop important optical components which are applicable to a wide range of potential future sustainable energy products, including building integrated and utility electricity generation, solar heating and solar hydrogen production, as well as systems which integrate these with natural and synthetic lighting.”
The Applied Research grant scheme is a flagship initiative run by the Carbon Trust to encourage further new business development of low carbon technologies. The applied research grants support projects up to the value of £250,000, with a central condition of financing being that each entrepreneur must be able to attract 40 per cent match funding. Since the scheme began in 2001, the Carbon Trust has committed more than £17m to the programme, in the process attracting more than £23m of other investment into Applied Research projects.
The next call for proposals closes on 12 April 2007. Any organisation interested in Applied Research grant funding can apply online at
www.carbontrust.co.uk/technology/appliedresearch.
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