NextBase closes with a bang: a market ready PV technology hero presented at EUPVSEC 2019, EU Workshop, and the final GA meeting!
At the end of September, the NextBase project officially finished. The project was highly successful, recording very high efficiencies of Interdigitated Back Contacted Silicon Heterojunction (IBC-SHJ) on cell (25.4%) and module level (22 %), a variety of technical exploitable results and a technology (IBC-SHJ) which is ready for mass production as early as 2020. Moreover, the NextBase consortium has been very active in disseminating the results to the scientific community and beyond, delivering 29 peer reviewed papers during the project period. Moreover, active collaboration with other H2020 projects (DISC and AMPERE) was established. In the final month of the project period, this came to fruition during two events: EUPVSEC 2019 and a Workshop in Chambery that was hosted by partner CEA in Chambery.
NextBase very active at EUPVSEC with many talks and a common booth with DISC and AMPERE projects
The NextBase consortium was very active at the EUPVSEC (9/13-09-2019 in Marseille) with six oral presentations! The following topics were covered by NextBase researchers:
- Tom Borgers, Imec, Title: Interconnection 1, 2, 3, 4.0: Buildup towards a PV Technology Hero?
- Antoine Descoeudres, CSEM, Title: The Versatility of Passivating Carrier-Selective Silicon Thin Films for Diverse High Efficiency Heterojunction-Based Solar Cells
- Pasmans, DSM, Title: Incidence Angle Modifier Evaluation for DSM Coating Technologies
- Legradic, MBR, Title: Tunnel Contact IBC Cells: An Industrial Process Using Shadow Masking
- Laurie-Lou Senaud, CSEM, Title: Bottom-Up vs Top-Down Approaches for Identifying and Mitigating the Transport Losses in High-Efficiency Silicon Heterojunction Solar Cells
- Paul Procel Moya, TU Delft, Title: On the Correlation between Contact Resistivity and High Efficiency (IBC-) SHJ Solar Cells
Moreover, a common booth with the DISC and AMPERE projects was organized, where the research was highlighted through demonstrators, posters and ambitious researchers!
Final Combined Workshop organized by NextBase, DISC and AMPERE
Another highlight in the final month of the NextBase project was the common workshop with the DISC and AMPERE projects on the 25th of September 2019 in Chambery (±90 participants). The scope of the meeting was to highlight the R&D (morning session) and industry (afternoon session) related achievements of the three projects. Moreover, 2 invited speakers, Pierre Verlinden (AMROCK, morning) and Walburga Hemetsberger (CEO of SolarPower Europe, afternoon) gave vital inputs about the urgent need for a global shift to Renewables. During panel discussions, the future of PV R&D and industry in Europe was discussed. The main conclusions of the day were that rapid growth of the production and deployment of solar panels is required to reach the Paris climate agreement targets and currently, production in Europe is very limited. However, the project results show that PV R&D in Europe is a world class and that if key industrial players can reach a certain minimum production capacity (GW range), the cost effective production of PV panels is possible in Europe. The challenge for industrial PV players is to reach this size which will require combining efforts by research institutes, industry, and policy makers.
NextBase final GA in Chambery
With the final GA in Chambery, NextBase researchers showed their final results of the project, discussed what lessons were learned during the project and what potential future projects partners were interested in. The project has been very successful and the basis for that success was the talented and ambitious researchers that made lots of efforts to collaborate in the most optimal way. Obviously, developments in PV solar power are not going to stop with the NextBase project and it is highly likely that the NextBase partners will find each other again soon during conferences and perhaps other H2020 or Horizon Europe projects. All those future projects and ongoing collaborations have been made possible by the bonds creating during NextBase!
