January 2009: Best Poster Award at 18th International Photovoltaic Science and Engineering Conference

Patrick Dupeyrat, PhD student at CETHIL, received on January 23rd, 2009 in Calcuta (India) the prize for the best poster at the 18th International Photovoltaic Science and Engineering Conference (PVSEC-18). This conference is one of the world's three largest conferences on photovoltaics. This PhD student at INSA Lyon has been doing his thesis since February 2008 at the Fraunhofer ISE (Institut für Solare Energiesysteme) in Freiburg in partnership with EDF R&D. His subject is the development of new concepts of PV/Th hybrid (photovoltaic / thermal) components that produce both electricity and heat in the form of heated water. The carried out research is multi-physical (intensification of heat exchange, electrical conversion, ...) and transverse to other science domains such as materials and chemistry. A first prototype is being tested, two others are already scheduled to reach a pre-industrialization phase in the near future.