A record year for our living lab for building-integrated PV
© BAIP/HZB
In 2025, our solar facade in Berlin-Adlershof generated more electricity than in any of the previous four years of operation.
With about 32 MWh, the solar facade of our BIPV living laboratory produced enough electricity to power more than 12 average four-person households. Thanks to the energy-intensive research landscape at the Helmholtz-Zentrum Berlin, we can also consume all of the electricity generated on site at any time.
Even after five years of operation, our building-integrated solar modules show no measurable degradation. Differences in annual energy yield can so far be attributed exclusively to weather-related fluctuations. According to the German Weather Service, the duration of sunshine in 2025 was around 1,900 hours nationwide. In addition, the year was comparatively low in precipitation, which, together with the high duration of sunshine, explains the high solar yield.
However, we were particularly surprised by December: exceptionally good PV weather led to yields more than twice as high as in the previous year! Especially in spring, autumn and winter, the sun is more favourable for the solar facade, so we regularly observe higher yield peaks than in the summer months.
We are excited to see how this year will turn out.
- Only at BESSY II worldwide: IR nanoscopy at very long THz wavelengthsThe team at the IRIS beamline at BESSY II has created a new experimental option: They achieved infrared nanoscopy with a spatial resolution of around 50 nm at very long THz wavelengths. This was possible thanks to a temporal pattern of light pulses known as the low-alpha operating mode at BESSY II. Worldwide, BESSY II is the only synchrotron light source at which users could perform nanoscopy in a single setup from 25 to 4000 cm-1, a unique opportunity for ultra-broadband characterisation of complex materials at the nanoscale in both the life sciences and materials sciences.
- Ultrafast demagnetisation - Thinner iron, stronger effectThe thinner an iron film, the more easily it can be demagnetised by a laser pulse. Researchers at the University of Duisburg-Essen, working with Helmholtz-Zentrum Berlin and other partners, have discovered why: the key lies in the magnetic order at the material's interfaces. In the long term, these findings could contribute to the development of new technologies for magnetic data storage. The results have been published in the scientific journal Advanced Science.
- Patterns of polar vortices in lead-free superlattices on siliconA team at HZB has, for the first time, reported polar vortices in (BaTiO3/SrTiO3)10 superlattices on silicon. These results expand the range of materials and substrates on which polar topological textures can occur and open up new options for incorporating complex ferroelectric states into silicon-based technologies.