SYLFEN WINNER OF THE WORLD INNOVATION COMPETITION

The energy storage solution developed by the start-up Sylfen is the winner of the World Innovation Competition, which was presented on Monday 18 July 2016 in Paris in the presence of Anne Lauvergeon and the ministers Axelle Lemaire And Thierry Mandon.

When renewable energies become cheaper than grid electricity, when new buildings integrate their own source of solar energy, the energy transition is on track. But there is one challenge remaining, because these energies depend on the presence of the wind or the sun. They are therefore impossible to control. This is the whole issue of energy storage: enabling a building to be powered from these intermittent energies.

The solution developed by Sylfen uses batteries and hydrogen. Batteries store energy for a short time, for the day-night cycles. Hydrogen, on the other hand, is used to store large quantities of energy for long periods of time. For example, excess of production of an office building on a good weather weekend can be converted to hydrogen by the water electrolysis process. Then, when energy runs out in a week of bad weather, hydrogen is reused, transformed into electricity and heat by the same energy processor, acting as a fuel cell.

The innovation developed by Sylfen stems from the research carried out at CEA-Liten in Grenoble over the past decade. It is a reversible technology that works both as an electrolyser (when you want to store energy in the form of hydrogen), and as a fuel cell (when you want to reuse that energy in the form of hydrogen). This technology is protected by more than 20 patents of which Sylfen holds a worldwide exclusive license.