By 2030 the European Union will
have to cover 27% of final energy
consumption with renewable
sources. In this context the
AMPERE project (Automated
photovoltaic cell and Module
industrial Production to regain
and secure European Renewable
Energy market) has been conceived.
Funded by the European Program
H2020 with almost 15 million euro,
for a total value of over 26 million
euro, AMPERE aims to develop an
innovative technological solution to
support the competitiveness of the
European photovoltaic industry and
regain market shares.
Coordinated by the Italian
company Enel Green Power, this
international project involves 15
partners among scientific institutes
and companies from 7 European
countries, all with a unique
worldwide experience.
AMPERE will develop a fully
automated pilot line for the
production of photovoltaic modules
with an innovative high-efficiency:
the bifacial heterojunction (HJT)
module solution that provides the
coupling between crystalline silicon
and amorphous silicon to guarantee
high performance in terms of
efficiency conversion and energy
productivity.
In more detail, the technical
objectives of the project AMPERE
will involve the production of 72-cell photovoltaic modules with over
400 watt peak power and a cell
conversion efficiency of over 23%.
AMPERE aims to demonstrate the
low-cost potential of innovative
manufacturing approaches,
deriving from low solar electricity
generation costs thanks to intrinsic
high efficiency and bifaciality
of the HJT technology. AMPERE
will contribute towards solving
the global climate challenge by
developing PV modules that are
more efficient, have a longer life
time and more reliability.
The main result of the project is
the setting-up of a 200 MW fullscale
automated pilot line in a
production environment at the Enel
Green Power’s 3Sun Fab, while
also preparing the next steps to a
GW scale plant in Europe. Another
notable key exploitable result is the
LCOE reduction target of at least
15% compared to conventional PV
mc-SI technology. This reduction
will be achieved thanks to the
intrinsic specificities of the HJT
technology (low cost process, high
efficiency and low temperature
coefficient) and the process
evolutions introduced in the project.
A major project outcome is
to demonstrate the financial
sustainability of PV Manufacturing
plants in Europe by studying the
possibility of building a big Giga fab
manufacturing plant in Europe. The
viability of the technology in terms
of throughput, reliability, costs,
efficiency, and in terms of project
bankability will be demonstrated as
one of the main project outputs and
it will show the potential for cost
and performance competitiveness
of the final product.
Moreover, leveraging on the project
results would be a significant
achievement and will influence
the PV market metric to shift
from Module cost focus (cost of
production of each module kWp) to
LCOE, levelized cost of electricity
focus (cost of generation of 1 kWh
of electricity). The technology
will also have strong upstream
(materials and equipments) and
downstream (BOS, installation,
utilities, etc.) impacts on the
European market. The results
coming from the development
of preliminary business plans
for Industrial actors, technology
providers and end-users,
demonstrate that strong growth
of the PV manufacturing sector in
Europe is possible within the next
few years.
Contact details:
Website: www.ampere-h2020.eu
The project has received funding from the European Union's Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement No. 745601