SOLARLab National Photovoltaics Research Program

Mission

Climate change is the largest threat to our society today, and energy generation is the largest contributor to the emission of climate gasses. We have to act now if we want to avoid catastrophic changes due to global warming. Solar photovoltaics (PV), the direct conversion of sunlight into electricity, can provide a major contribution to the energy transition. PV technology can be fully renewable, generating energy without CO2 emissions.

According to the Dutch and international Climate Agreements, PV must generate a major fraction of our energy already in 2030, growing further afterwards. However, the present technology, installed at the present slow rate, will fail to make the required contribution to a society running on renewable energy. A targeted research program is required to solve the bottlenecks that inhibit the multi-terawatt-scale deployment by 2030.

Novel PV concepts

A coordinated research program is needed to develop new concepts to

1) lower the cost of PV and increase the output power per unit area

2) seamlessly implement PV in our landscape and infrastructure at a very large scale.

 

Strategic independence

Developing PV technology in the Netherlands and Europe is essential to make the energy transition less dependent on technology and supply chains from Asia.

 

Economic opportunity

The energy transition creates an enormous economic opportunity. We must make sure we reap the benefit of this by developing our own PV technology and building our own PV industry.

We present a focused research program to achieve these goals. We carry out a targeted, integrated, large-scale scientific and technology research program towards creating an energy system for our society that runs fully on renewable energy.

SOLARLab

SOLARLab is the consortium of all researchers in the Netherland active in photovoltaics research. The goal of SOLARLab is to carry out a joint research agenda to

  • Demonstrate record-efficiency stable, sustainable solar cells
  • Form a powerful ecosystem with a ​strong voice for PV research in NL and abroad
  • Enhance PV collaboration in NL​, share laboratories and coordinate funding streams​

Solarlab was founded in 2016 and brings together >50 research groups active in PV that supervise >150 PhD students and postdocs, as well as 60 technology researchers at TNO.

SOLARlab is composed of six main hubs at AMOLF, RUG, TNO, TUD, TUE, UT and satellite groups at UU, RUN, and UvA

SOLARLab was founded at the initiative of two national Energy research Focus Groups installed by FOM/NWO in 2011.

AMOLF

NWO-Institute AMOLF, Amsterdam,  Light Management in New Photovoltaic Materials

TUD

Delft University of Technology: Electrical Sustainable Energy – Opto-Electronic Materials

TUE

Eindhoven University of Technology: Solarlab – Complex Molecular Systems – Plasma and Materials Processing

TNO

TNO Energy Transition (Petten, Eindhoven) and partners within the Solliance consortium

UG

University of Groningen: Photophysics and Opto-electronics

UT

University of Twente: Solar Centre Twente