Increasing the competitiveness of the EU PV manufacturing industry

Topic description

Specific Challenge:

The European PV manufacturing industry has faced strong foreign competition in the last years, which has led to a dramatic reduction of its production capacity. The challenge is to develop innovative manufacturing solutions that substantially improve competitiveness of the European PV manufacturing industry and help regain a part of the potentially increasing worldwide PV market, while creating more secure and sustainable supply chains for the European PV market

Demonstrating manufacturing innovation and scale-up of highly performing PV technologies at pilot-line level, targeting GW-scale, high-yield throughput and cost-effective industrial production of cells and modules.

Applications for Innovation Actions (bringing the technology from TRL 5-6 to 6-7) are invited (please see part G of the General Annexes).

Opening the project's test sites, pilot and demonstration facilities, or research infrastructures for practice oriented education, training or knowledge exchange is encouraged.

The Commission considers that proposals requesting a contribution from the EU of between EUR 10 to 15 million would allow this specific challenge to be addressed appropriately. Nonetheless, this does not preclude submission and selection of proposals requesting other amounts

Trigger new investments in the European PV industry, via the establishment of pilot lines which target innovative/optimised production processes and/or tailored development of equipment for mainstream PV technologies at the state of the art of research, and show the potential for cost and performance competitiveness of the final product.

Cross-cutting Key-Enabling Technologies (KETs)