It’s not just local commercial enterprises that are turning their attention to solar power: Finnish researchers are also paving the way for a solar future. In recent years, the VTT Technical Research Center of Finland has developed flexible solar panels and an emission-free cooling unit powered by solar energy. They have also developed a way to convert electricity produced from solar energy into gas or liquid fuels.

Here are five more examples of Finnish solutions in solar energy and related fields.

Sun Spot
Sun Spot, founded by a Finnish entrepreneur in 2011, built Uganda’s first assembly plant for solar energy storage systems. Prefabricated kits using Chinese components help power literally everything from water heaters to outdoor lamps.

“We want to help people living in rural areas by giving them access to electricity,” said founder Viljami Kettunen.

Having gained momentum, Sun Spot is now focusing on larger projects, especially for public sector customers. To date, one of the company’s most significant contracts has been a street lighting project in the Ugandan city and port of Entebbe with road construction partners in China.

Solar Finland
Solar Finland was founded in 2016 as the parent company for a number of existing entities operating in the city of Salo in southwestern Finland. The company offers innovative solar energy products and solutions domestically and internationally and ultimately intends to make solar energy accessible to all.

The company optimizes and consolidates the work of Salo Solar, Salo Tech, Salo Automation and Salo Energy. They are all experienced solar professionals involved in various aspects of designing, manufacturing and installing solar energy systems, as well as selling electricity produced from solar energy.

Salo Solar, for example, is particularly proud of the fact that all of its solar panels are designed and manufactured domestically. The plant’s high level of automation, which guarantees first-rate quality and efficiency of the panels, has attracted great interest from international customers, including Asian energy companies.

“They have already understood from experience what it means to buy low-quality products and how it affects production after five to ten years. They trust European products,” said Anu Areva, CEO of Salo Solar.

Virte Solar
Virte Solar, based in Turku, Finland, was one of the first companies in the world to produce roofs with solar panel elements. The combination of sheet metal roofing and CIGS thin-film cells makes this innovative product more than 90 percent lighter than its predecessors. (CIGS, Copper indium gallium selenide, is a semiconductor compound of copper, indium, gallium and selenium used in the second generation of solar cells; the advantage of thin-film panels based on CIGS is their flexibility.)

For the convenience of homeowners, the solar panels, which produce electricity, are already factory-installed in the roof sheeting, and the roof structure is delivered and installed in just one time.

“I dreamed of building materials that would produce electricity themselves as parts of roofs, windows and walls,” CEO Jaakko Virtanen told me in 2016. – This is now becoming a reality.

Savosolar
With its award-winning solutions, Savosolar has established itself as a solar thermal revolutionary. In recent years, for example, the firm has made impressive gains in the Danish solar market, gained a foothold in Latin America and entered China in early 2019.

This year, Savosolar, headquartered in Mikkeli, will deliver a solar heating system to customers in northeastern France and will also complete several ambitious projects in other parts of Europe with its German partner Uniper.

“Applying our unique technology means minimal heat loss and maximum energy output, and the results are best seen in practice,” assured CEO Jari Varjotie.

Solar Water Solutions.
This purification technology company is helping to solve the global water crisis with its unique technology for producing drinking water from sea, lake and river water using solar energy. The patented solution is based on an innovative reverse osmosis process and has already proven its reliability and efficiency in Africa.

“Reverse osmosis technology usually requires a lot of energy. Solar Water Solutions offers a technological solution to this energy problem,” said Antti Pohjola, CEO. – Our solution makes it possible to supply safe water to people living in remote areas without access to electricity.

Aiming for a three percent share of the renewable water treatment market and more than 100 million euros in revenue by 2025, the company recently reached its maximum crowdfunding goal of 1.2 million euros on the Finnish investment platform Invesdor in less than two weeks.