This project will capitalise on Australian IP by providing industry-leading anti-reflective performance and durability, with clear potential to reduce solar energy system costs at all scales.
The key metric of any utility-sized power source is cost effectiveness. For potential solar energy utilities, this means that all available photons must be used to extract every last Joule from the solar resource, at the lowest possible cost. This project aims to minimise reflective losses at glass-air (or plastic-air) interfaces in utility-scale solar energy systems, thus increasing their performance while lowering their cost.
The project will address this need – and opportunity – by constructing and operating a pilot‐scale manufacturing facility for novel anti‐reflection (AR) coatings based on durable metal oxide materials. The facility will be capable of coating both small and large optical components such as lenses and protective glass cover plates with a maximum nominal output capacity of 350,000 units per annum (assuming 80 per cent up‐time and 20 hours per day operation).
This technology was developed by researchers at the University of Queensland and is now being commercialised by Brisbane Materials Technology Pty Ltd, supported by New Venture Partners and the Southern Cross Renewable Energy Fund. The coating is based upon mesoporous silica technology deposited via a simple room temperature and ambient pressure liquid process, and is well suited to both large and small area applications on optical glass and plastic. Several years of laboratory and field testing have shown these coatings to provide industry‐leading AR performance and durability, with clear potential to reduce solar energy system costs at all scales across a range of technologies.
The project is supported by leading US solar industry players in all major solar energy segments. It is also supported by key US and European supply‐chain partners such as the EV Group (coating plant manufacturer), Lisec (premier high performance glass processing equipment manufacturer) and Ducatt (manufacturer of high performance solar glass).
Fact Sheet: A pilot scale plant for the production of solar AR coatings (PDF 363KB)