Industrial scale up and circularity pathway for IPV technologies (EUPI-PV Partnership)

Expected Outcome

Integrated PV (IPV) technologies represent specific production challenges, notably linked to the greater diversity of IPV products in terms of format, shape, material and technical constraints. While IPV technologies represent a major opportunity for the European energy transition, unlocking a greater potential for solar PV, it is challenging to bring new products to the market due to the lack of availability of suitable infrastructure to demonstrate technically and economically innovative technologies at scale. In addition, as IPV components are not as standardised and present much greater technological, material and size variability than conventional modules, dedicated recycling and material recovery processes need to be demonstrated.

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

1. Increase the potential for commercialisation of IPV technologies creating a competitive technological know-how for the European PV industrial base;
2. Increase recyclability and minimise the environmental impact of IPV;
3. Introduce new business models and open new markets in IPV manufacturing, reuse and recycling;
4. Support the execution of the solar energy joint research and innovation agenda.

Scope

Proposals are expected to demonstrate

• Suitable IPV manufacturing, technically and economically innovative technologies at scale;
• Flexible IPV production pilot lines to test the 100kWp+ scale (with linked demonstration sites);
• Demonstration of recycling processes for various sizes, materials and technologies of IPV products (BIPV/IIPV, agriPV, VIPV, floating…).

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.

Activities are expected to achieve TRL 6-7 by the end of the project - see General Annex B. Activities may start at any TRL.