June 24, 2014
Press release - New dawn for large-scale PV manufacturing in Europe: reality or pipe dream?
The Annual Conference of the European Photovoltaic Technology Platform
took place on 24 June 2014 in Brussels during the European Sustainable
Energy Week. 110 people including five representatives from the European
Commission gathered to discuss the future of large-scale PV manufacturing in
Europe.
“The time of excess solar cell and module production capacity is coming to
an end,” said Prof Eicke Weber, Director of Fraunhofer Institute for Solar
Energy Systems and speaker for the European Gigawatt Fab initiative known
as ‘X-GW’. “Europe needs to be ready in 3-4 years to manufacture cutting
edge, next generation technology cost effectively, which means with
extensive use of automation and at GW scale.” The focus has to be on
advanced technology, stressed Vidmantas Janulevičius, CEO of BOD Group
(which has recently invested in a 70 MW PV cell line and a 50 MW glass-glass
BIPV module line in Lithuania): “Producing standard technology will not be
competitive.”
Bonifacio García Porras (representing DG Enterprise) shared the view of
Vidmantas Janulevičius and Prof Eicke Weber that manufacturing creates
high-value jobs and sustains research, development and innovation
excel ence.
The European Investment Bank has seen some of its PV financings go bad but
Jochen Hierl (who works in the Bank’s Due Diligence department) saw light at
the end of the tunnel: “The sector has been in crisis, but people now need to
understand that new opportunities may be appearing.”
The Chairman of the EU PV Technology Platform, Prof Wim Sinke, concluded:
“PV is here to stay. The market is now so huge compared to just a few years
ago – tens of GW – that what we once cal ed a niche is now a multi-GW
segment. Technology development in PV wil increasingly respond to the
needs of these different segments.”