Fraunhofer ISE expands in Germany's Climate Protection Capital

Europe's largest solar research center is building a new laboratory in Germany's Climate Protection Capital of 2010.

On Monday, the Fraunhofer Institute for Solar Energy Systems (ISE) announced the construction of a new laboratory and testing facility at a site down the street from its current headquarters in Freiburg, Germany. Built nine years ago, the current headquarters were already too small when the institute moved in, according to a press release. In January 2010, new office space was therefore rented after ISE have also added on some rental space at the Micronas plant just northwest of Freiburg.

The new lab will have a net floor space of 4,240 square meters, some 2,000 of which will be for testing. The focus in the new lab will be on materials research and coatings, such as for the absorber tubes used in solar thermal power plants and micro-structured surfaces to optimize solar cells and antireflective solar glass.

Built in 1991, this building within the city limits of Freiburg was an early test facility designed by Fraunhofer ISE to demonstrate that homes in Germany could get all of their energy from solar power.

Architecturally, the building will also be innovative. The heating system will have a novel heat pump that is especially efficient because it utilizes process heat; it will be combined with a large layered storage tank. The façade of the seminar rooms and the staircase will also have a new generation of transparent solar panels, whose efficiency has been specifically approved for vertical installations; this solar façade will simultaneously provide a view to outside the building even as it shades the building and generates electricity. Fraunhofer ISE now also has more than 1,000 staff members, 120 of whom are PhD students.

On a similar note, the City of Freiburg received an award for Climate Protection City in Germany for 2010 yesterday. The award is funded by German environmental NGO Deutsche Umwelthilfe along with the German subsidiary of First Solar, which provides the prize: a 30 kilowatt photovoltaic array to be installed on a municipal building at no charge.