The REPowerEU plan and the EU Solar Energy Strategy introduced targets for the deployment of solar PV amounting to 600 GWac by 2030. Complying with these targets will be crucial for the European Union to reach its climate targets and free itself from import dependency on fossil fuels and the costs this imposes on Europe’s competitiveness in terms of high energy prices. The Solar Strategy also introduces a target, which has been enshrined into the Net-Zero Industry Act, to re-consolidate the European solar manufacturing sector and scale up European manufacturing capacity across the entire value chain to at least 40% of the EU’s annual deployment needs, or 30 GW of annual capacity by 2030. Innovation is particularly important in the solar PV sector, which is characterised by a short technology cycle, where new technologies become mainstream in only a few years. Novel technologies offer therefore the opportunity to innovative start-ups and scale-ups to manufacture and put on the market competitive and efficient PV products, strengthening the resilience of the EU PV value chain thus reducing excessive dependencies and increasing security.

Project results are expected to contribute to all of the following expected outcomes:

1. Increase the potential for commercialisation of innovative PV technologies creating a competitive technological know-how for the European PV industrial base;
2. Contribute to the objectives of the EU Solar PV Industry Alliance;
3. Support the execution of the solar energy joint research and innovation agenda.

Proposals are expected to demonstrate

• Solar cells/modules with conversion efficiencies beyond those commercially available and degradation/reliability and performance at least on par with the most reliable commercially available technologies;
• A multi-MWp-ready resilient, energy efficient, defect-free production technology for cells/modules;
• Production equipment & pilot line, including digitalised and automated processing.

Whenever the expected exploitation of project results entails developing, creating, manufacturing and marketing a product or process, or in creating and providing a service, the plan for the exploitation and dissemination of results must include a strategy for such exploitation. Proposals will present a plan for the exploitation and dissemination of results which should include a strong business case and sound exploitation strategy. The exploitation plan should include preliminary plans for scalability, commercialisation, and deployment (feasibility study, business plan) indicating the possible funding sources to be potentially used (in particular the Innovation Fund).

This topic implements the co-programmed European Partnership for Innovation in Photovoltaics (EUPI-PV). As such, projects resulting from this topic will be expected to report on the results to the European Partnership for Innovation in Photovoltaics (EUPI-PV) in support of the monitoring of its KPIs.