Panel Discussion

The photovoltaic sector has reached its first TW milestone in the spring of 2022 – 1 TWp of cumulative installed PC capacity with an annual production of solar cells and modules in the range of 200 to 230GWp.

The next TW milestone, 1 TWp of annual production has to be reached within the next 5 to 7 years and reach even 2 TWp by the beginning of the next decade, to reduce the world wide GHG emissions in order to stay on pathway to minimise the global temperature increase to 1.5C by the mid of this century as stipulated in the Paris Agreement of 2016.

A fivefold increase of annual solar cell production within the next 5 to 7 years and a 10 fold increase by the beginning of the next decade has severe consequences for the PV industry and the needed research to enable it. Despite the fact that technology improvements in the solar system hardware will still be at the core to achieve this increase, additional issues have to be resolved, which require the attention of researchers and solid scientific work.

Along the whole PV value chain – from raw material extraction to the recycling or re-use of solar system components – the PV sector has to reduce its environmental footprint and become truly sustainable and circular.

In addition the build up of such an industry as well as the deployment of such big PV capacities require huge financial means and must be with the consent of societal stakeholders.

The panel is intended to discuss open research questions/topics, which are so far not or not enough addressed by the three major PV conferences, EUPVSEC, IEEE PVSC and PVSEC. The result of such a discussion should lead to a better understanding to which  industrial sectors and scientific communities the PV sector should reach out to enlarge the scientific basis to accelerate the energy transition and fully utilise the potential of PV.