SOLLAB: The Open Solar Living Lab at UPJV (FR)

A new Living lab

As part of the SOLARISE project, a solar installation pilot has been planned on the flat roof of the building located in the city centre of Amiens, housing part of the EESA research team at LTI (Laboratoire des Technologies Innovantes – Innovative Technologies Laboratory).

This installation, called the Open Solar Living Lab (acronym SOLLAB), is an open platform for education, research and development on solar energy technologies, innovative technologies in electricity and heat production, storage and optimal energy management.

Goal

SOLLAB will be used for educational and research purposes like:

• Evaluation of the technologies in the solar conversion chain: solar panels, batteries, DC-DC converters, inverters, internet of things, communication and sensors.
• Optimization of the power conversion chain
• Control and energy management strategies
• Control of thermal comfort of a building considering energy efficiency
• Test and Evaluation of the smart grid under different operating conditions

Some unusual components

PVT air versus PVT water

Next steps

All the equipment has already been installed on the roof. The production of electricity and heat is injected into the building. Steps still to execute:

• All sensors and actuators will be centralized
• Design a supervision application to allow the SOLLAB’s monitoring
• Optimize the system operation for the use of the generated electricity, hot air and heated water
• Develop an open access framework to allow users to view the SOLLAB data

More specifications of the lab can be found here.