Voltiris

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Voltiris improves commercial greenhouses energetic efficiency by producing renewable energy without impacting their high agricultural yield. Challenge DescriptionQuestion: What problem would you like to solve?Agricultural greenhouses are key toward a sustainable food supply, however they have extremely high energetic needs mostly due to heating and artificial lightening. There is a push from the government, the retailers and the consumers to reduce the carbon footprint of greenhouses.In Switzerland alone the energetic cost for greenhouses is equivalent to ~300 MChf/year for a surface of ~600 ha of greenhouses. In some cases, artificial lightning is too expensive to even be considered.Question: Who are the customers and how will they profit from a solution?Energy providers buy our product to be installed inside greenhouses. The benefits are the following:access to large areas for a photovoltaic power plantlow rent for the land. In turn, greenhouse owners can buy electricity at a cheaper faresell surplus energyQuestion: How does your challenge affect energy savings or CO2 emissions?A greenhouse in Switzerland has an energetic need of around 0.6kWh/m2/day. Using our solution diminishes/compensates locally at least one third of the consumption of the greenhouses. For example, covering 5% of the Netherland's 5000ha greenhouses with Voltiris' solution would result in saving 70kton CO2 per year.Current status and previous activitiesQuestion: What has been tried before? What was not successful? What have you learned?The idea of spectral filtering for agrovoltaics is not new (e.g. academic work by Zhang et al., AIP Conference Proceedings 2021, 110006 (2018), commercial product by DWP Energy Solution...). However they have a low efficiency that we could also reproduce in the discovery phase of our venture. Our solution with improved (patent pending) has been able to overcome these problems and make the solution viable.Resources neededQuestion: What are your planned work packages. How can the Energy Lab help you?* The energy lab has a network of energy experts that could help us better understand the energy market.* Strategic partners within the HES/FH network and within the photovoltaic network could help us with the implementation of our solution* Getting accepted in the Energy lab program gives us more credibility * Initial tranche would cover the costs of our prototyping experimentQuestion: Planned work packages:Stage 1: Product-market fit (until mid-2022). Goal is to ensure technical feasibility of Voltiris (and its performance) and the desirability of its solution for the market.Stage 2: Scalability (mid 2022-end 2023). Viably ramp-up operations to start sellingsolution within key client accounts in Switzerland and beyond via selected partnersStage 3: Profitability (2024-onwards). Accelerate international operationexpansion while lowering costs thanks to increased economies of scale.In more details, the following work is planned in the product-market fit phase:Technology: Prototyping, piloting (2 pilots, small and large scale), test of different PV materials and different dichroic mirror performance (Innocheque with CSEM starting in October).Market: Belief audits with ecosystem players, design Go-To-Market, create Business plan, forecast revenues, assess WTPExecution: Protect IP, define team core competencies, define internal 'definition of success', legally incorporate Voltiris as a SA.Financial: Find mentors, partners, 'Voltiris believers', get support from government agencies (VentureKick, Innosuisse...), create strategic partnerships (e.g. HES Valais...).

Project Idea Metadata

Project Idea Name: Voltiris
Date: 9/10/2021 9:49:25 AM
Administrators:
- Jonas Roch

Project Idea Description

Challenge Description

Question: What problem would you like to solve?

Agricultural greenhouses are key toward a sustainable food supply, however they have extremely high energetic needs mostly due to heating and artificial lightening. There is a push from the government, the retailers and the consumers to reduce the carbon footprint of greenhouses.

In Switzerland alone the energetic cost for greenhouses is equivalent to ~300 MChf/year for a surface of ~600 ha of greenhouses. In some cases, artificial lightning is too expensive to even be considered.

Question: Who are the customers and how will they profit from a solution?

Energy providers buy our product to be installed inside greenhouses. The benefits are the following:

access to large areas for a photovoltaic power plant
low rent for the land. In turn, greenhouse owners can buy electricity at a cheaper fare
sell surplus energy

Question: How does your challenge affect energy savings or CO2 emissions?

A greenhouse in Switzerland has an energetic need of around 0.6kWh/m2/day. Using our solution diminishes/compensates locally at least one third of the consumption of the greenhouses. For example, covering 5% of the Netherland's 5000ha greenhouses with Voltiris' solution would result in saving 70kton CO2 per year.

Current status and previous activities

Question: What has been tried before? What was not successful? What have you learned?

The idea of spectral filtering for agrovoltaics is not new (e.g. academic work by Zhang et al., AIP Conference Proceedings 2021, 110006 (2018), commercial product by DWP Energy Solution...). However they have a low efficiency that we could also reproduce in the discovery phase of our venture.

Our solution with improved (patent pending) has been able to overcome these problems and make the solution viable.

Resources needed

Question: What are your planned work packages. How can the Energy Lab help you?

* The energy lab has a network of energy experts that could help us better understand the energy market.

* Strategic partners within the HES/FH network and within the photovoltaic network could help us with the implementation of our solution

* Getting accepted in the Energy lab program gives us more credibility

* Initial tranche would cover the costs of our prototyping experiment

Question: Planned work packages:

Stage 1: Product-market fit (until mid-2022). Goal is to ensure technical feasibility of Voltiris (and its performance) and the desirability of its solution for the market.

Stage 2: Scalability (mid 2022-end 2023). Viably ramp-up operations to start selling

solution within key client accounts in Switzerland and beyond via selected partners

Stage 3: Profitability (2024-onwards). Accelerate international operation

expansion while lowering costs thanks to increased economies of scale.

In more details, the following work is planned in the product-market fit phase:

Technology: Prototyping, piloting (2 pilots, small and large scale), test of different PV materials and different dichroic mirror performance (Innocheque with CSEM starting in October).
Market: Belief audits with ecosystem players, design Go-To-Market, create Business plan, forecast revenues, assess WTP
Execution: Protect IP, define team core competencies, define internal 'definition of success', legally incorporate Voltiris as a SA.
Financial: Find mentors, partners, 'Voltiris believers', get support from government agencies (VentureKick, Innosuisse...), create strategic partnerships (e.g. HES Valais...).

Voltiris improves commercial greenhouses energetic efficiency by producing renewable energy without impacting their high agricultural yield.