Research lines

Arequipa combines unusually high irradiance with harsh conditions for a solar panel: large daily temperature swings, intense ultraviolet radiation and airborne dust. Datasheet values, measured under standard conditions, describe poorly what happens here.

This line measures effective field performance, tracks module degradation over time and assesses how soiling and cleaning strategies affect the energy produced.

It also covers the sizing of off-grid systems for rural areas without grid access and the analysis of their technical and economic feasibility.

The region's solar resource can cover much of the heat demand that is met today with firewood, liquefied gas or electricity.

We design and test collectors, solar water heaters, crop dryers and solar cookers, measuring their thermal efficiency and their behaviour throughout the year.

The design criterion is that they can be built and repaired locally with accessible materials: a technology nobody can maintain solves nothing.

Without long, reliable measurement series, no installation can be sized and no project can be assessed. This line keeps a continuous record of global, diffuse and ultraviolet irradiance.

Those data are used to fit and validate solar resource models and to produce maps for locations without their own instruments.

The region's altitude pushes the ultraviolet index above usual values, which makes monitoring it a public health matter as well as an energy one.

Fine particulate matter is the pollutant with the best-documented effect on respiratory health, and its distribution within a city is very uneven.

We run PM2.5 and PM10 monitoring campaigns, study the optical properties of aerosols and analyse how local meteorology disperses or concentrates pollutants.

The results are meant to provide a technical basis for urban planning and environmental policy decisions.

Experimental work on thin films and semiconductor nanomaterials with applications in photovoltaic devices.

Characterisation combines optical, structural and electrical properties to relate how a material is prepared to its final performance.

A second strand deals with photocatalysis for degrading pollutants in water, at the boundary between materials and the environment.

In much of the Peruvian highlands, houses are built with no thermal criteria at all, and sub-zero nights are endured without heating. It is a health problem before it is a comfort problem.

This line assesses the thermal behaviour of existing buildings, tests low-cost passive solutions — Trombe walls, attached greenhouses, insulation with local materials — and measures their real effect on indoor temperature.

It is complemented by energy audits and by simulation of building performance throughout the year.