Imperial commences Solar Flow

Imperial College London (ICL) today officially inaugurated UK-based solar energy technology spinout Solar Flow to develop systems combining photovoltaic (PV) and solar thermal energy production.
Solar Flow was founded in November 2018 with the help of Imperial Innovations, the tech transfer arm of ICL now owned by commercialisation firm IP Group.
Hybrid photovoltaic thermal (PV/T) solar systems marry the PV panels commonly used to generate solar power with a thermal heating system that adds cooling fluid to excess PV energy to produce hot-water and space-heating.
Solar Flow’s concept seeks to rectify flaws in conventional PV/T designs whereby parity in the temperature of PV cells and hot-fluid output create a conflict of interest; lower temperatures allow greater PV efficiencies but do not generally create favourable thermal output.
By detaching its PV cells from the cooling fluid, Solar Flow expects the two components to be able to operate at different temperatures. It will achieve this by partitioning incoming sunlight through a prism-like component, ensuring PV cells remain suitably cool with all excess sunlight redirected for thermal heating purposes.
Solar Flow aims to deliver four-times more useful energy from its product than standard PV cells and up to twice as much as existing hybrid PV/T systems.
The spinout was founded by Christos Markides, professor of clean energy technologies at the Department of Chemical Engineering. Its licence terms were agreed under ICL’s Founders Choice program, which allows founders greater equity in companies based on university intellectual property in exchange for the provision of fewer tech transfer services.
Tim von Werne, senior technology licensing executive at Imperial Innovations, said: “Solar Flow’s novel approach to PV/T design promises greater cost savings and efficiencies not only when compared to its constituent technologies, but also against panels already in the market.”