June 13 to 16 the Smarter E conference took place in Munich, Germany. Jakub Kral and Martijn van der Leeden (myself), both member of the Environmental Solution Innovation Center (ESTIC), visited the conference.

The Smarter E conference advertises itself with “Creating a new energy world” and claims to be Europe’s largest platform for the energy sector. The focus is on renewable energies, decentralization and digitalization of the energy industry as well as cross-sector solutions from the electricity, heat and transport sectors. Here’s the top 5 take-aways, in random order.

TSGC

With an abundance of solar panels at the exhibition, the question rises ‘what happens when these solar panels reach end-of-life?’. Luckily TSGC provides Eco-friendly & Economical PV Recycling Solution with 100% recovery rate. With no chemicals and no heat needed, TSGC claims their 40 feet container size unit can recycle up to 10.000 tonnes per year.

Over Easy Green Roof Solar

Norwegian start-up Over Easy invented a way to combine green roof tops with PV cells. The cells are installed vertically in rows with the ability to harvest solar energy from two directions. Having full access to the roof makes it easy to inspect, maintain and repair your roof.

ESS Iron Flow Storage

Oregon based energy storage company ESS provide an environmentally sustainable solution (they claim) with a low LCOS (Levelized Cost of Storage) with their Iron Water Battery solution.

Claims:

• By combining easy-to-scale technology with low-cost chemistry, ESS delivers the lowest cost across 6-12 hours of storage.
• Fast response time, unlimited cycle life and no capacity degradation over a 25-year design life delivers operational flexibility.
• ESS batteries are safe, water-based, non-hazardous, fully recyclable and have a low carbon footprint. Use of earth-abundant resources ensures sustainable production too.

Learn more about Iron Water Battery here.

Elestor

100% clean energy storage with the Hydrogen Bromine flow battery, that is what Dutch Start-up Elestor claims. Using abundant active materials and an efficient cost reduction strategy should make sure of this.

Energy Family

What if you could sell your surplus of electricity to other consumers, rather than deliver it to your energy supplier? This is the aim of Austrian startup Energy Family. In short, the over production of your solar panels is sold to someone in your self-created Energy Family community. The price paid is higher than what the energy supplier pays you, but lower than what you would pay to your energy supplier. Win-win for the community members, and Energy Family takes care of the whole billing system.