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Newsletter N5

October 2016

[email protected] www.rephlect.eu Newsletter N5 – October, 2016

A BSQ Solar Initiative

AUI’s pilot SPC at Ifrane moving ahead

Ifrane, September 30th 2016

Within the REPHLECT project, BSQ and the University of Al Akhawayn (AUI) are doing good progress in setting up the first pilot Satellite Production Center (SPC) of BSQ’s HCPV technology in AUI’s facilities at Ifrane.

Ifrane is a city located at an elevation 1655m in the southern slope of the Middle Atlas within the Fès‐Meknès region. Its modern town was established by the French during the protectorate era as an Alpine‐like mountain resort.

With its 2.000 kWh/m2 yearly Direct Normal Irradiation (DNI), it can optimally perform as a testing location for HCPV technology.

The SPC, one of the cornerstones of the REPHLECT PV manufacturing paradigm, is to comprise among other things a Module Assembly Line (MAL) for the manufacturing of BSQ HCPV modules. This manufacturing will be based on a supply chain with a high local content, also being researched and created for the purpose of this REPHLECT demonstration, and on the HCPV receiver blocks (comprising the very high efficiency multijunction solar cells)

manufactured and sent from BSQ’s Receiver Manufacturing Line (RML) based in Yeles (Toledo, Spain).

To host this pilot MAL, AUI has allocated space in its campus’ facilities, belonging to a multipurpose building in the eastern fringe of Ifrane. They are being retrofitted to perform as a production floor with the entire necessary infrastructure. These works are moving ahead quickly as can be seen in the pictures below that shows how they were initially, and their current status.

Less than 200m away from this building, a piece of land has been selected to host the so‐called Pilot Power Plan (PPP). This will be a full demo power plant of BSQ’s HCPV systems and will be sized to be able to power the SPC’s MAL, thus becoming a sort of “self‐replicating” manufacturing facility (a von Neumann factory!) and further diminishing the environmental footprint of BSQ’s HCPV technology.

Also, essential for the effective deployment of the SPC and the operation of its MAL by local personnel is the training of AUI engineers that can, later on, perform as instructors and production managers.

With this purpose, AUI commissioned these two engineers: Faouzi Jouti and Amer Archkik to BSQ’s factory in Yeles for two weeks. From BSQ’s side it was Juan José Alcalde, Process Engineer and Raúl Arroyo, Mechanical Engineer and designer of the MAL manufacturing units, were mainly their mentors. By the end of their



training period Faouzi and Amer had received an introduction to HCPV technology, had understood the HCPV module assembly process following a very practical approach that enabled them to produce some first sample modules completely on their own, after being instructed on materials procurement and the assembly of a MAL, as well as in the use and programming of the MAL’s traceability software, which will also be installed – in a lite version – in the Ifrane pilot SPC.

The course was closed with a visit to BSQ’s HCPV plant in Villa de Don Fadrique (Toledo, Spain) and a farewell team‐building lunch wishing our first Moroccan trainees, now comrades, to see them soon successfully handling BSQ’s SPC in Ifrane.

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BSQ Solar participates in Marrakech’s COP22 jointly with AUI

Marrakech, November 16‐17th 2016

During September, AUI and BSQ agreed to jointly present the REPHLECT initiative in the coming COP22 International Conference on Climate Change that was to be held in Marrakech from Nov. 7th to 18th.

http://cop22.ma/en/

COP stands for the “Conference of the Parties.” It is the supreme decision‐making body of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), opened by signature in 1992 during the Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro and later entered into force in 1994. Since then, there have been twenty‐one COPs, with the most recent having been organized in Paris this past December.

Through this instrument, the United Nations has equipped itself with an action framework to fight global warming.

The main objectives of the Framework Convention and its related legal instruments are to stabilize the concentration of greenhouse



gases in the atmosphere at a level that would prevent “dangerous anthropogenic interference with the climate system.”

The Convention stipulates,”Parties should protect the climate system for the benefit of present and future generations on the basis of equity and in accordance with their common but differentiated responsibilities and respective capabilities.”

During the COP, member States strive to reach agreements on reducing greenhouse gas emissions caused by human activity, assess the evolution of their commitments and review the implementation of the Framework Convention and other legal instruments that the COP adopts. Typically a series of negotiations are carried out beforehand in order to optimize the agenda and discussions.

The previous COP conference resulted in the Paris Agreement aiming to limit the rise in global temperature “well below 2°C” compared to pre‐

industrial levels (1880‐1899). To do so, the States have set the target of reducing CO2 emissions by 50% by 2050 and 100% by 2100.

By the release date of this Newsletter, BSQ’s assistance to COP23 was already over. The REPHLECT project and BSQ’s HCPV technology was presented in the booth of the Conference des Présidents d’Université (CUP) in the Conference’s so‐called Green Zone.

The REPHLECT concept of distributed manufacturing of PV and ultimately its new paradigm for a global PV industry resulted very appealing to those that visited the booth. We discussed possible partnerships and implementation plans with Government Delegates to the conference from the USA, Spain, France, Switzerland, Belgium, Philippines, Thailand, Burkina Faso, Mali, Guinea, Sudan, Nigeria, and Congo. Different media interviewed BSQ delegates and the icing on the cake happened when we received the visit of Her Royal Highness Princess Lalla Hasna. Most visitors were from Morocco and the Conference also served the purpose of establishing first contacts and collaboration conversations with local stakeholders in solar energy such as MASEN (Moroccan Agency for Solar Energy) , IRESEN, and the country’s electric utility ONEE (Office National de l’Electricité et de l’Eau Potable).

All In all, an excellent event was announced the last day and will continue in 2017 with the COP23 to be organized in Bonn with the presidency of the Fiji Islands, one of the world’s countries most seriously threatened by global warming and rising sea levels.

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BSQ participates in international VC investment meetings in Bordeaux and Brussels

Bordeaux‐Brussels, October 2016

BSQ was selected and invited to participate in two international gatherings putting together innovative startups with C‐Level executives of large international companies and venture capital funds in order to develop collaborations.

First among them and already advanced in the previous N4 issue, was the Inpho Venture Summit that is being held every two years in Bordeaux at the magnificent Place de la Bourse that took place on Oct 6th and 7th.

BSQ Solar was one of the 20 companies selected to present its products and business plan at the 2016 edition. Specifically, BSQ together with four other start‐ups were invited to pitch in front of investors in the Cleantech Session.

Furthermore, it was a well‐organized networking event in which BSQ could introduce, through one‐on‐one meetings, the key points of the REPHLECT value proposition, its business plan and technology, to potential investors and business partners both from Europe and abroad, particularly Silicon Valley, carefully matched by the event organizer Blumorpho.

This event was almost immediately followed by another one of a similar spirit, organized by the European Commission in Brussels on 10‐11 Oct: the SME Instrument Innovators Summit. This event has been designed by EASME (EC’s Executive Agency for SMEs) to further support SME Instrument Champions, i.e. winners of Phase 1 or Phase 2 SME Instrument funding, such as is the case for BSQ.

The event was held at “The Egg”, a retrofitted early 20th century industrial building, that serves both as an incubator to startups and as a multipurpose events center. Dr. Bernd Reichert, Head of Unit “SMEs in Horizon 2020” at EASME, delivered the opening plenary talk. Several other keynote speakers took the floor during the two days event, seasoned entrepreneurs that explained business cases coming from their experience with startups.



Numerous parallel workshops on different business topics of special interest to technological startups were also scheduled throughout the event, as well as pitching sessions in front of invited investors and venture capitalists. However, as in the previously described gathering, the most interesting feature of the SMEI Innovators Summit was the intensive networking facilitated throughout the event, again through one on one time limited interviews scheduled through a specific matchmaking web application.

BSQ made good use of this application and was able to present the REPHLECT project and the underlying BSQ HCPV technology to potential partners, business angels and venture capitalists, as well as to European Commission officers participating in the event related to EU programs supporting technological SMEs in different ways.

BSQ to further refine CPV technology through collaboration with IES‐UPM

BSQ Solar and the Institute of Solar Energy of the Polytechnic University of Madrid (IES‐UPM: http://www.ies.upm.es/index.php?id=348 ) have entered into a collaboration agreement to further refine BSQ’s HCPV technology and production capacities.

Founded in 1979, IES‐UPM is the oldest research center in Europe specifically devoted to research in the field of photovoltaic solar energy.

Having published the first treatise on concentrator photovoltaics in 1989 (https://www.amazon.com/Solar‐Cells‐Optics‐Photovoltaic‐Concentration/dp/0852741065) it is considered one of the cradles of nowadays HCPV technology in all its aspects from non‐imaging optics, to very high efficiency cell concepts and from pioneering large scale deployment of CPV systems to the development



of specific manufacturing equipment and instrumentation.

Within this collaboration, BSQ and IES‐UPM will work together on design aspects of HCPV systems and also specifically focus on how to further optimize production and quality

assurance equipment so that it can be integrated into BSQ’s processes in the most cost effective way.

rph-nl-005-newsletter 5tv1.0-0 (revnj,revilh)€¦ · a bsq solar initiative ... evolution of their...

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