Heliatek Enters Chinese Market with World’s First BIOPV Concrete Facade Installation

Heliatek has successfully delivered the first BIOPV – building integrated OPV – solar films to China. The HeliaFilms were installed at Reckli China in PuDong, Shanghai. They were directly integrated to concrete façade elements provided by Reckli, a long-term strategic business partner of Heliatek, becoming the world’s first BIOPV concrete façade installation.

Heliatek is the world-leading company in the production and commercialization of organic solar film. HeliaFilm is being successfully marketed with different building materials such as glass, concrete and PVC membranes. Heliatek has been closely working together with renowned industrial partners for the different building materials.

RECKLI and Heliatek have agreed on a development partnership for a green building solution based on HeliaFilm together with structured matrices of concrete, using building envelopes to generate power. RECKLI is known as a world-leading producer of elastic matrices for concrete.

“HeliaFilm combined with Reckli’s architectural concrete solutions are delivering a long-sought solution for Chinese architects and building planners. Concrete structures are being enriched with HeliaFilm to generate power and at the same time keeping an aesthetical appeal,” said Dr. Thomas Bickl, Heliatek’s vice president of sales and marketing. “This pioneering installation will set the precedent for similar BIOPV installations around the world to achieve the requirements for carbon neutral buildings that are self sufficient in generating their own power requirements.”

The RECKLI China office was chosen for installing the first HeliaFilm concrete façade on an east, west and south facing façade in order to demonstrate the superior harvesting factor under various mounting conditions that often occur in real world BIPV applications. The power generated by each façade is being individually monitored for comparison purposes. The installed capacity of around 20 square meters amounts to 0.62 kWp and the generated energy is used internally.