Singapore’s Energy Innovation Programme Office (EIPO) on Wednesday awarded S$12 million worth of research grants to five research teams under the inter-agency’s Energy Innovation Research Programme (EIRP).
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The programme, which succeeds the similarly focused Clean Energy Research Programme that ended in 2012, is dedicated to the development of the clean energy industry in Singapore. EIRP supports commercially relevant and viable research and development through its own competitive project funding mechanism.
This is the office’s first of four grant calls to date, and research teams were asked to find innovative solutions to reduce cost and recycle materials for solar energy systems.
According to the EIPO, an agency handled by both the Economic Development Board (EDB) and the Energy Market Authority (EMA), solar modules and systems have experienced steady cost reduction in recent years but its mass adoption is still far from reach.
Grant applications, in order to show how costs can be decreased further, had to show innovation throughout the whole value chain. From wafers to cells and from modules to systems, the design and manufacturing process are important factors for a cost-effective silicon photovoltaics system.
On the other hand, recycling such silicon parts and materials is also just as crucial, said the EIPO. In a statement, the office detailed the improved operational efficiency and environmental standards it brings to the manufacturing process and industry respectively.
According to Yeoh Keat Chuan, EIPO co-executive director and EDB managing director, the “research projects selected for this competitive funding call reflect the growing sophistication in Singapore’s solar research ecosystem.”
These are the research proposals awarded by the EIPO for the first grant call:
- Maximising PV Array System Efficiency under rapid shading conditions (ERI@N, Nanyang Technological University)
- Novel dielectric coatings for silicon wafer solar cells (SERIS, National University of Singapore)
- The TruePowerTM Alliance - Advanced combination of extended indoor and outdoor PV modules & system testing across various climate zones (SERIS, National University of Singapore)
- Ion-implantation for cost-reduced fabrication of industrial type silicon wafer solar cells (SERIS, National University of Singapore)
- Singapore PV module Recycling Programme (SiPro Pte Ltd, Singapore)
Grant awardees for the second EIRP grant call, centering on smart grid technologies, will soon be announced as well. Meanwhile, the respective third and fourth grant calls on solar energy and clean energy systems were recently announced last May.
These research projects are a key initiative for the EIPO, having allotted a significant portion of its budget to this programme.
For EMA chief executive and EIPO co-executive director Chee Hong Tat, “R&D is important to address the challenges of deploying solar energy, including the impact on Singapore’s power system due to its intermittent nature. This will allow us to maximise the use of solar energy in Singapore when the technology becomes commercially viable in the future.”
