Abstract
Nowadays, available PV modules are flat. The PV presented in this chapter is a glass tube with a flexible PV cell inside. The tubular diversification of the PV was initially inspired by the start-up company Solyndra in Silicon Valley CA, which manufactured CIGS cell directly on the surface of an inner glass tube. Unfortunately, Solyndra went bankrupt due to high manufacturing costs. In 2011, a leaner tubular PV was invented at Gate-East in Garching, which enabled substantial simplification compared to the Solyndra's ideas and design. It was named Augsburger Tubular Photovoltaics (ATPV) and patented with Osram, later Ledvance. It has numerous advantages as follows: the cell manufacturing is roll-to-roll technology, the absorption films can be thinner at the same efficiency, because the tubular shape extends the light path, compared to flat cells and modules. Simplified installation and operation: low weight; semitransparent for rain, wind, and snow; better cooling compared to a flat panel; leaner and cost-effective substructure. Agricultural application: protection against hail but permeability for sun and rain—homogenous plant growth as general: reduced evaporation, short-period shade and therefore, uniform growing; good protection at high temperatures and from destructive hail—dual as well as multiple use is possible. The concept of ATPV was successfully proven, and a small-scale manufacturing was built at the Osram, later Ledvance site in Augsburg.
Dedicated to Prof. Fred Koch (TU Munich).
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Acknowledgements
We are thankful to all colleagues and partners supporting the ATPV efforts so far: Osram and more recently Ledvance in Augsburg, particularly the Equipment Engineering department and the GlassFab and also to our partners: Flisom in Switzerland; ZSW Stuttgart; the HM in Munich; and the HSWT in Weihenstephan/Freising, Germany.
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Appendix
Appendix
Worldwide, more than 16.330.000.000.000 kWh electricity is consumed by the seven billion inhabitants of our planet in 2016, with a rapidly increasing tendency for the feature.
The farming area around the world is estimated of the order.
To produce food, 4 060 000 km2 of the US territory and 166500 km2 of the German territory is used as farming land.
There are approximately 30 billion square feet (2.8 billion square meters) of flat roofs in the US., an area large enough to collect the sunlight needed to power 18 million American homes or replace 38 conventional coal-fired power plants.
The flat roofs in Germany have an area of one million square meters, this area is enough to supply electricity roughly to 5 Million German homes.
There is a hope that ATPV can be manufactured competitive and on the right scale in Bavaria in a very near future. There is no doubt that affordable PV will serve than at least a small share of this huge electricity and food demand on our planet.
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Petrova-Koch, V., Mayer, J. (2020). Augsburger Tubular Photovoltaic (ATPV). In: Petrova-Koch, V., Hezel, R., Goetzberger, A. (eds) High-Efficient Low-Cost Photovoltaics. Springer Series in Optical Sciences, vol 140. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-22864-4_11
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