Avanzada de Cataluña Wows With PV Innovation
Monday, June 14, 2010
The Instituto de Arquitectura Avanzada de Cataluña house is capturing a lot of excitement at Solar Decathlon Europe. Now, all of the large sections of the house have been assembled and placed.
According to the team’s faculty advisor, Vincente Guallart, the team found a Spanish company to make flexible PV modules using 22%-efficient SunPower cells. On Saturday, a vice president of SunPower visited the team to check on progress. The vice president was excited and intrigued that someone could make a flexible module using the rigid cells. There are 21 cells in series for each module. The flexible material could have been clear, but the team chose black.
Byron Stafford is the site operations manager of the U.S. Department of Energy Solar Decathlon. Throughout the Solar Decathlon Europe competition, U.S. Department of Energy Solar Decathlon organizers are reporting from Madrid.