Press release
On June 18, 2024, the NexWafe team took the stage to receive The smarter E AWARD in Photovoltaics, a prestigious industry honor bestowed upon the company’s EpiNex® process, enabling higher efficiencies, lower costs and lower carbon emissions in solar wafer manufacturing. A distinguished expert panel evaluates the large number of award applications, selecting the most innovative products and projects – from start-ups to global corporations – as winners.
NexWafe CEO Davor Sutija commented following the award ceremony, “In addition to saving money and saving energy, we can actually make the wafers more performant. We can engineer the properties, and the standard way of making wafers has not been innovated in for over 80 years, so it’s ripe for disruption.”
At The smarter E AWARD ceremony during Intersolar Europe, up to three winners are announced in each of the five award Categories: Photovoltaics, Energy Storage, E-Mobility, Smart Integrated Energy and Outstanding Projects. The award, previously known as the Intersolar AWARD, honors technological innovations and groundbreaking solutions in each of these categories.
The Photovoltaics category award is presented to “companies making a substantial contribution to the success of the industry.” The innovations must be driving the modernization of the energy infrastructure globally. The smarter E AWARD honors innovative PV technologies, such as solar cells and modules, balance of systems, PV components (cables, connectors, junction boxes, etc.), mounting systems, installation aids, tracking systems, production technologies, solar power plants and more.
The evaluation criteria for the award includes:
• Degree of technological innovation (30%)
• Safety (15%)
• Technical and environmental benefits (20%)
• Economic benefits (20%)
• Proof of innovation (10%)
• Presentation (5%)
The award jury is made up of representatives from industry companies and organizations including Centre Suisse d’Electronique et de Microtechnique (CSEM SA), pv magazine Deutschland (Solarpraxis AG), Applied Solar Expertise (ASE), Solar Action, Zentrum für Sonnenenergie- und Wasserstoff-Forschung (ZSW) Baden-Wuerttemberg, Solar Power Europe and Fraunhofer Institute for Solar Energy Systems ISE.
There were two additional winners in the Photovoltaics category: Helioroof by ArcelorMittal Construction and Sunny Central FLEX by SMA Solar Technology. We congratulate our fellow 2024 award winners!
