COST Action PEARL PV’s Conference – Enabling the PV Terawatt Transition

COST Action PEARL PV organized an international conference from 14 to 16 March 2022 at University of Twente
in Enschede, the Netherlands. The program of this conference is related to the mean aims of this COST Action:
to improve the energy performance and reliability of photovoltaic (PV) solar energy systems in order to enable
the PV terawatt transition. This aim is embedded in research that is conducted in five Working Groups which will
organize five sessions at the PEARL PV Conference on resp. (1) PV Monitoring, (2) Reliability and Durability of PV,
(3) PV Simulation, (4) PV in the Built Environment and (5) PV in Grids.

The final program of the conference is available here:

FinalProgramPEARLPVConference14_15March2022-Final

All presentations that are available by 27 April 2022 can be downloaded here:

AllPresentationsCOSTActionPEARLPVConferenceMarch2022

Venue of this event: U ParkHotel (and Waaier building of University of Twente)

Plenary speakers

Dr. Gordana Kregar, COST Association, Brussels, Belgium
Title: COST  PROGRAMME & CA 16235  – Overview

Dr. Gordana Kregar is working as a Science Officer in the COST Association for the last two years. She is responsible for 22 COST Actions covering multiple Science and Technology fields, providing them constant support, ensuring quality control and taking responsibility for the management of the relevant budget. As well, one of the main responsibilities include implementation of proposal submission, evaluation, selection and approval procedure. Before joining COST, she was employed at EUREKA Association. As the Call Coordinator of Eurostars Programme and the Coordinator of the Evaluation team, she was leading all the activities related to two-step evaluation process and supervising human resources assigned to the call. She has a scientific background acquired in the field of the experimental atomic physics. Her experience as a researcher in physics comes from 7+ years working at the Institute of Physics, Zagreb in two laboratories, for laser spectroscopy and for laser cooling, which has led to several internationally recognized articles and her Ph.D. thesis.

Dr. Teresa Barnes, Materials Reliability and Durability Group, NREL, Denver, USA
Title: Predicting and Extending PV Module Lifetime

Teresa Barnes manages the Materials Reliability and Durability Group at NREL. She is also the Principal Investigator and Director of the DuraMAT Consortium for module materials research. Dr. Barnes’ group focuses on PV module and system reliability, including accelerated test development, materials and interface modeling, degradation mechanisms, field failure modes, sustainability, and materials science. Our group has worked with stakeholders throughout the PV value chain on the development of industry standards for reliability testing and energy yield.  We conduct application driven research on adhesion, cell and module degradation, mechanical damage, material weathering, and other topics. Teresa has worked in PV at NREL for 16 years on thin-film PV, flexible devices, and transparent contacts and started focusing on reliability in 2016. She is a Chemical Engineer with a PhD from the Colorado School of Mines and a BS from the University of Maryland.

Prof. dr. Monica Lira-Cantu, Catalan Institute of Nanoscience and Nanotechnology ICN2, Barcelona, Spain
Title: Perovskite Solar Cell Stability

Monica Lira-Cantu is the director of the Nanostructured Materials for Photovoltaic Energy Group (NMPE) at ICN2 (Barcelona, Spain). Her research interests are the synthesis and application of nanostructured materials for next-generation solar cells: Dye sensitized, Hybrid, Organic and Perovskite Solar Cells. The NMPE group is focused on the synthesis of novel nanomaterials and the control of their optoelectronic properties through their manipulation at molecular level, with the aim of developing highly stable and highly efficient perovskite solar cells. NMPE aims at the development of highly stable solar cells for industrial applications (e.g. building integration PV) and novel self-powered photovoltaic-based devices for Internet of things (IoT) applications (e.g. sensors, wearables, printed electronics). The group is internationally recognized for its implication in the enhancement of the operational stability of emerging photovoltaics.
Monica Lira-Cantu has a Bachelor in Chemistry Science (Mexico) and obtained a Master and PhD in Materials Science (University of Barcelona). She worked at ExxonMobil Research & Engineering in New Jersey (USA) initiating a laboratory on energy related applications, University of Oslo (Norway), Riso National Laboratory (Denmark), the Center for Advanced Science and Innovation (Japan) (2006) and she was also a visiting professor of EPFL (Lausanne, Switzerland). She has more than 125 publications and a h = 48 (July 2021).

Prof. dr. Christophe Ballif, Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL) and CSEM, Neuchâtel, Switzerland
Title: Photovoltaics go fast: improved technologies and carbon footprint for a wider range of applications

Christophe Ballif is the director of the Phototovoltaics and Thin Film Electronics Laboratory (PV-Lab) at the institute of microengineering (IMT) in Neuchâtel (part of the EPFL since 2009). The lab focus is on the science and technology of high efficiency heterojunction crystalline cells, so-called passivating contacts for solar cells, multi-junction solar cells include novel generation Perovskite on innovative optical high speed detector and on various macroelectronics application. It also deals with energy management with a focus on integration of solar electricity into the energy system. Since 2013, Ballif is also the director of the CSEM PV-Center, also located in Neuchâtel. The CSEM PV-Center is focusing more on industrialization and technology transfer in the field of solar energy, including solar electricity management and storage. At the core of the CSEM PV-center activities lies several “pilot lines” for various kinds of solar cells manufacturing and a platform for developing “ideal packaging solutions and polymers” for PV modules. In addition, joined facilities between CSEM and EPFL of over 800 m2 are available for modules manufacturing, measuring and accelerated aging.  In 2016, Christophe Ballif received the Becquerel prize for his contributions to the field of high efficiency photovoltaics.

Prof. dr. Jan Kleissl, University of California, San Diego, USA.
Title: Solar Forecasting

Jan Kleissl is the Director of the UC San Diego Center for Energy Research and Professor in the Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering at UC San Diego. He researches the interaction of weather with engineering systems in buildings, solar power systems, and the electric power grid. Kleissl’s solar variability models, sky imager solar forecasting tools, and numerical weather prediction solar forecasts have been commercialized or used operationally to advance solar power integration. Kleissl received an undergraduate degree from the University of Stuttgart and a PhD from the Johns Hopkins University, both in environmental engineering with a focus in environmental fluid mechanics. Jan Kleissl has published over 100 papers in the top journals of solar power resources, forecasting, and integration.

Full organizing committee
Dr. David Moser, EURAC, Italy, Vice Chair of this Action
Dr. Jeff Kettle, University of Glasgow, UK, WG2 Leader on Reliability and Durability of PV
Prof.dr. Nicola Pearsall, Northumbria University, UK, WG3 Leader on PV Simulation
Dr. Bogdan Burduhos, Transylvania University of Brasov, Romania, WG4 Leader on PV in the Built Environment
Dr. Jonathan Leloux, Lucisun, Belgium and Spain, WG5 Leader on PV in Grids.
Prof.dr. Angèle Reinders, University of Twente and Eindhoven University of Technology, the Netherlands, Chair of this Action
Prof.dr. Wilfried van Sark, Utrecht University, the Netherlands, WG1 Leader on PV Monitoring

Travel information to University of Twente (UT) in Enschede, the Netherlands, can be accessed here: Contact | Route & campus map | Home (EN) (utwente.nl)