Products and Technologies

Among the technology articles, some notable ones, of course, from my personal point of view, that might impact technology development in the field of HVAC, solar, De-canonization, energy storage and other energy business.

1. According to the statics, 40% of the U.S. energy consumption is said to go to buildings. And 50% of that is used for thermal loads like HVAC as well as water heating and refrigeration. It means that 20% of energy produced is consumed for thermal loads of buildings. Then, we'd rather remind the current trend that the society is busy preparing green electrification which naturally drives installation of battery storage which may cause the potential problems of raw material unavailability in the future. We admit that it is the best to use energy without conversion as possible. Thermal energy is best to be used for thermal loads. In other words, thermal storage could be best if combined with battery storage. Adding to that, what if we can store thermal energy and electricity in one device, control the thermal storage (PCM) temperature according to the ambient temperature so that it could be operated both with heating temperature and cooling temperature, and further more, what if the solar panel could collect both heat and light (PVT) from the first? (inputted on 30th November,2021, please refer to the news from Berkeley Lab.)

2. You can be introduced to how to use "An open-access database and analysis tool for perovskite solar cells based on the FAIR principles" by referring nature energy. (inputted on 29th December, 2021)

3. Since it is accepted that heat pumps offer CO2 free heating when the electricity comes from the renewable power sources. The integration of heat pump with electric storage as a VPP (Virtual Power Plant) for residential home gives a flexibility to grid network operators when there comes grid congestion due to over-production of renewable energy or etc. Now it is known this experimental test has been going on in Germany. I might guess that collaborative business model among air conditioning solution companies, battery storage companies, and electric vehicle manufactures is expected with VPP apps or smart home apps developer. (inputted on 5th January, 2022)

4. A U.S. based company offshoring from south Korea has launched the world first nail-able solar shingle product. I think this is a meaningful try since the aesthetic point of view has been stressed in the home solar roof system. But, as the major press commented, the contact of this power generating shingle directly with a roof surface should be cautiously handled as in many case of dealing with heat management.(inputted on 6th January,2022)

5. It is reported that a company (Canadian Start-up, Solaires Enterprises Inc.) launches Perovskite ink. This could be an notable development if its arguments saying usability to scale-able deposition process under atmosphere, long shelf life and stable efficiency under ambient condition are right. (inputted 7th January, 2022)

6. PV and Peltier heat pumps were combined to experimental air-conditioning systems and its performance was analyzed by the one of the simplest neural network algorithm. The determination coefficient said to be unity. Now we cautiously expect that data based control algorithm will be also dominant soon for the HVAC industry. (inputted 28th January, 2022)

7. It is notable that in Chile's last year's energy auction, in August, the submitted lowest price was around 15.96 KRW/kWh ($0.01332/kWh) for the 2.31 TWh of renewable energy. And it is also reported that large scale solar reaches 37.20~67.14 KRW/kWh (0.02737~0.04939 EUR/kWh) without subsidies LCOE in Sweden. Then, what about in case of Korea? It's reported to be around 264.6 KRW/kWh (in 2020) for renewable energy according to the Jung-Ang news paper on 22nd Sep, 2021 or 136.1 KRW/kWh for 3MW class PV plants according to the report of Korea Energy Economics Institute (KEEI). Admitting that the KEEI's data is more reliable, the value is 8.5 times more than Chile's case and 2.0~3.7 times more than Sweden's case. This number is too huge to ignore when we set up future energy plan. (inputted 17th February, 2022)

8. Perovskite solar cell is said to be done damp-heat test successfully by the Photovoltaic Laboratory of KAUST. (inputted 23rd February, 2022)

9. The average cell cost of EV Lithium-ion battery pack is about $101/kWh in 2021, and it is analysed that its 51% comes from the cathode. [24% of manufacturing and depreciation, 12% of anode, 7% of separator, 4% of electrolyte, and 3% of housing] Global 80% of cell manufacturing comes from China. And 93% of cathode precursor for Korean manufacturer were imported from China in 2021. (inputted 23rd February, 2022)

10. LG Electronics announced that it will exit solar module manufacturing business because of its 'sluggish performance' and future uncertainties. (inputted 24th February, 2022) [see "Philosophy of R&D for Business" section for my views on this subject.]

11. Growing worries about the limited amount of Lithium will be eased? It is said that the pumped hot brine from the subsurface fed to geothermal power plants contains the lithium. Some estimation said that the annual production of lithium carbonate equivalent(LCE) from the U.S. geothermal brine could reach the comparable amount of current annual global production. (inputted 24th February, 2022)

12. It is interesting to expect that old mines could be used for gravity-based energy storage facilities. Now in UK its feasibility study is going on. (inputted 24th February, 2022)

13. It looks very impressive that the solar company "Hanwha Q cells" actively moves into the market of home VPP (Virtual Power Plant) solution. With this solution, this company is known to go to Australia and will go to Europe soon. (inputted 24th February, 2022) [see "Philosophy of R&D for Business" section for my views on this subject.]

14. I think the materials for the Atmospheric Water Harvesting (AWH) application will be very useful, not only for coping with the water scarcity but also for solving problems caused by superfluous water vapors which allocates a lot of latent heat load to the air conditioners. According to the recent paper, the development team extracts 5.87 L of fresh water per kilogram of the material per day, from the air with 30% humidity. It is said that approximately 10% of water on earth preserved in the atmosphere in the forms of water vapor or droplet. (inputted 10th March, 2022)

15. In utility scale solar projects in Japan, the lowest bid offered in the auction was $0.078/KWh. (inputted 10th March, 2022)

16. According to the news article, Hanwha solutions acquired 4 power plant projects recently in France. It is also known that its acquired business development amount now reaches 10GW from EU. I think this kind of active development achievement comes from the Hanwha solution's acquisition of QENERGY France last year. The solar business is never a simple device manufacturing business but a supplying business of power plant or electricity. This widely known key factor for business success is quite well evidenced by Hanwha solutions again. Now the movement comes faster and faster to remove the import of natural gas from EU area and the spread of renewable energy will be accelerated, which is well matched with Hanhwa solution's business strategy, happenly or not. (inputted 17th March, 2022)

17. The technology trend media are buzzing with the news that new type of the efficient hydrogen generation electrolysis is invented from Australia. Its major working principle is to remove bubble blanket on the electrode by the introduction of capillary wetting. (inputted 17th March, 2022)

18. I support Hanwha's acquisition of REC majority shares. As far as I know, now Hanwha comes to occupy major value chains by adding one of the far-upstream companies where solar industry value starts. This also provides the excellent fuel for more aggressive projects development by QNERGY which is the far-downstream company Hanwha acquired last year. (inputted 25th March, 2022)

19. (Refer to article no.11 above.) An energy resource development company signed a geothermal heat energy off-take agreement with a major energy supplier. That energy resource development company will finally secure a lithium supply from the earth deep brine source. But, the approval of this projects is supposed to be difficult since this kind of lithium extraction from such a population dense area is under severe criticism. (inputted 20th April, 2022)

20. A very interesting research is going on in the field of refrigeration and air conditioning. It is trying to use solid material as a refrigerant. The surprising fact is that the candidate material is the "Perovskite" which is a major material of current worldwide research for the new solar cell development. Anyway it requires the extremely high pressure around 200 bars. In my thought it also needs to solve the every difficult aspect of heat transfer while suppressing the size increase. Therefore, I strongly want to remind them of Metal Hydride Heat Pump utilizing the principle of adsorption for the hydrogen storage. Yes, there still remain a lot problems, but we have to consider that hydrogen society is coming and the problems will be solved by all united efforts someday. (inputted 25th August, 2022)

21. Hydrogen panel!! I could trace the same subject news more than three years back. Though, now is approaching the time I expected. A Belgian research institute announced that a hydrogen panel which absorbs moisture from the air and generates hydrogen by Photovoltaic electricity. Well, of course, there remains lot of obstacles including hydrogen collection, pressurizing and lowering cost etc. But, in my opinion, this approach should be explored in any means. I hope some meaningful advances in near terms. (inputted 10th November, 2022)

22. Something we are neglecting when we develop high efficiency HVAC systems especially in humid region is that we don't divide latent heat load from sensible heat load. It is becoming more necessary when we build net-zero building. There should be some kind of latent heat removal special part which absorb moisture and then regenerate with low temperature heat. (inputted 10th October,2024)

Further reviews and thoughts will hopefully continue here ...