HORIZON 2020: which research priorities for PV?

EUREC Agency, with the support of the European Photovoltaic Technology Platform, organised a workshop to discuss the main research priorities for the PV sector to be put forward in the next European research programme (Horizon 2020), published at the end of November 2011.

The day was organised in such a way to enable presentations from different European initiatives on their work done so far, and on their expectations for the next research priorities in the PV sector.

EUREC Agency President, Keith Melton, introduced the day by welcoming all participants and presenting the meeting objectives. Various initiatives have been launched at European level in the field of PV since the European Photovoltaic Technology Platform (www.eupvplatform.org), created in 2005 with the aim of bringing together industry, research, academia, and other stakeholders to define common research priorities for the PV sector.

Since the adoption of the Strategic Energy Technology Plan (SET-Plan), more initiatives have been launched in the area of PV: the European Energy Research Alliance (EERA), and its related joint programme dedicated to PV (http://www.eera-set.eu/index.php?index=24), as well as the Solar Europe Industrial Initiative (SEII- PV component) (http://setis.ec.europa.eu/about-setis/technology-roadmap/european-industrial-initiative-on-solar-energy-photovoltaic-energy).

The objective of the workshop is to present and discuss these different initiatives and how they interact, in order to evaluate synergies and overlapping, and to present a coherent set of research priorities for the PV community.

Minutes of the workshop

Initial view on HORIZON 2020 (Greg Arrowsmith- EUREC Agency)

Strategic Research Agenda (2nd edition) and PV research priorities (Nicola Pearsall- Northumbria University)

EERA Joint Research Programme- Photovoltaic Solar Energy (Philippe Malbranche- CEA-INES)

KIC Innoenergy and the energy challenge (Susana Maure Perez- CC Alps Valley Region)

General presentation of the SOPHIA project (Philippe Malbranche- CEA-INES)

Solar European Industry Initiative (Manoel Rekinger- EPIA)

Energy Materials Industrials Research Initiative (Peter Rigby- UMICORE)