SRB Energy, a spin-off company formed by Grupo Segura and Benvenuti, has supplied solar thermal panels to develop a renewable energy system at Geneva International Airport in Switzerland.
The rooftop of the main terminal building of the airport will be installed with around 300 units of high-temperature solar panels. These panels have evolved from vacuum technology that has been developed at CERN, the European Organization for Nuclear Research, for fundamental physics. The new generation of solar panels will be deployed to keep the buildings cool during summer and warm in the winter.
CERN has developed the vacuum technology in order to to meet the requirements of particle accelerators. A high-grade vacuum solution is important for colliders, where particles undergo collision with each other. The Intersecting Storage Rings (ISR) is the first proton-proton collider in the world that commenced operation at CERN in the year 1971 and started ultra-high vacuum research. The Large Electron–Positron collider (LEP) of CERN created new vacuum records at the end of the 1980s. The Large Hadron Collider, developed in the 1990s, has integrated green technology with thin-film coating techniques that led to the development of solar panel applications.
The vacuum technology offers superior insulation to heat chambers of the panels, thus minimizing heat loss and enhancing efficiency. The panels can efficiently recover the energy generated by diffused light when compared to traditional panels. These benefits make the panels ideal for less sunny, colder climates, where traditional panels are less efficient.