IoT-enabled solutions for local solar energy

Solnet Group is a smart solar solutions provider that offers utility-scale smart solar and energy storage solutions. Solnet helps businesses save energy costs and reduce their carbon footprint by generating clean renewable energy locally, providing power below grid parity. The company takes full responsibility for planning, installing, and operating solar plants. All maintenance, repairs, updates and cloud-based data services are part of the service. The solution features detailed information from utilities so users can buy energy from the grid when demand is at its lowest.

Finland

43

Portable biomass densification technology

Takachar developed technology at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and licensed it in order to develop small-scale, low-cost, portable biomass treatment systems that can be attached to the back of tractors, trailers, or even donkey carts. The innovation can be deployed on farms in remote areas to take small pockets of biomass residues and process them onsite into a chemically densified form that is moisture-resistant and volumetrically dense. This can reduce the logistical, collection, and disposal cost by about 75% compared to current alternatives such as baling and pelleting. The innovation therefore provides farmers with a cost-effective way to clear their land of crop residues after harvest.

India

41

Virtual assistance for planning climate-friendly trips

The main goal of AiM is to reduce business trips by providing companies with a superefficient virtual assistant and more relevant information, so they would be aware of how much money, time and CO2 emissions they could save when avoiding or optimizing their meeting-trips. By using AI/machine learning, the virtual assistant becomes more and more accurate over time, knowing exactly what works best for each user, always with the sustainability criteria in mind. Business flights can either be replaced by train trips or online video meeting solutions such as Skype depending, among other factors, on the distance between the meeting participants.

Austria

36

Guidance for apartment seekers to minimize travel

HomeWay provides software that helps people that are looking for a new home to move closer to public transport stations and to reduce their commuting time. The innovation matches several parameters of users such as budget, daily activities and other specific requirements that can be customized to generate an optimized housing location. By using HomeWay, a home with shorter commuting distances or reduced need of a privately-owned car can easily be chosen. This would reduce emissions from urban transports and simplify urban planning and expansion of urban areas which could further reduce emissions created by mobility demands.

Austria

31

HIKARI positive energy building

Toshiba and Bouygues have together developed a solution for positive energy buildings they called “HIKARI”, which generates more energy than it consumes. A first-of-a-kind positive energy building, located in Lyon, France, HIKARI is designed to be an exceptional example of a smart building that leads to rethinking the design of more traditional buildings, to ensure a smart, sustainable city. Created through a partnership with the Japanese government agency New Energy and Industrial Technology Development Organization (NEDO) and Grand Lyon, HIKARI is a part of Metropolitan Lyon’s mid-term objective to design new uses for housing and shared areas to encourage a "zero carbon" territory.

Japan

30

Small three-wheeler EVs for transportation

Clean Motion has developed a small, efficient vehicle. The ultra-light Zbee is three-wheeled, electric vehicle aiming to achieve high efficiency and driving economy. Clean Motion claims its front-end crash structure and three-point safety belts give it improved safety features over competing lightweight vehicles. Zbee replaces conventional cars for short distance transportation of up to three people or light cargo. The company claims that Zbee uses 7% of the energy of the average fossil-fueled city car, with speeds of up to 45 km/h. Its lean form factor and lightweight fiber reinforced plastic body allow it to be parked easily.

Sweden

30

Ancillary services for PV power plants

Conventional power plants are often used to provide ancillary services such as frequency regulation in electricity grids. It had traditionally been thought that large scale solar PV would not be able to perfom stability services in the grid. First Solar have demonstrated that conventional power plants such as coal power plants can be replaced by PV power plants in the provision of frequency regulation. This replacement helps in the reduction of CO₂ emissions by lowering dependence on traditional fossil-fueld power sources.

Chile

29

Smart micro-grid for clean energy

Basil Energetics offers a solution to manage green power at the tail end or at the load end of the grid. This helps to cater for both urban and rural areas through its decentralized approach. The offered solution is provided in the form of a package, consisting of standalone solar panels, but also includes a range of innovative hybrid household electrical appliances such as a ceiling fan, LED lights, air conditioner, refrigerator etc. The demand and supply is managed using a smart micro-grid (SMG) controller, called an iGrid. This scheme eliminates the requirement of electrical conversions, particularly DC to AC in hybrid appliances, to a large extent.

India

28

Solar service for urban multi-tenant buildings

EINHUNDERT Energie deliver solar power as a service with digital metering services to multi-tenant and commercial buildings. As well as offering solar power for multi-tenant-buildings EINHUNDERT Energie has an app that unites and visualizes digital metering data (energy, heat, water). The German “Energiewende” (energy transition) is therefore made accessible to millions of people living or working in rental and shared spaces, giving access to clean technology as a service.

Germany

28

Business model for hydrogen generation and supply  

H2PV is a business program of Phineal, which seeks to develop a business model for generation and supply of hydrogen obtained from photovoltaic energy. The energy production disconnected from the electrical network can be utilized for energy storage, fuel cells and transport systems with internal combustion engines dual and other applications combined with other hydrocarbons. Introduction of hydrogen can enhance their energy properties and emission reduction.

Chile

27