Photovoltaics is booming in Europe, with around 18.7 gigawatts of new capacity installed last year. In addition to rooftop and ground-mounted solar module installations, the development of new areas of production – such as on façades, artificial bodies of water and fields – is key.

With many of the continent’s countries paving the way for ambitious photovoltaics projects, a general spirit of optimism prevails in Africa’s budding solar industry.

Read the Intersolar Europe Exhibition Newspaper Issue 02 2020

Ulrike Jahn graduated in physics and leads various research & development projects in the business area of solar energy of the TÜV Rheinland Group in Cologne, Germany. Her work focuses on characterizing PV module technologies on one hand and on PV system performance analysis on the other hand. She is project manager of an international expert group, Task 13 of the PVPS programme of the International Energy Agency (IEA), dealing with technical and financial issues of PV performance and quality. She coordinates this network of 60 international experts in 23 countries in their joint efforts to assess and improve the performance, operation and reliability of PV systems over their lifetime. Since 2018, Ulrike is a Member of the Steering Committee of the European Technology and Innovation Platform for Photovoltaics (ETIP PV).

Sascha Lindig works as a researcher at EURAC in Bolzano/Italy, where he is currently completing his doctorate in cooperation with the University of Ljubljana/Slovenia as part of the H2020 Marie-Sklodowska-Curie Solar-Train project. His studies focus on statistical models for the quantification of the degradation of PV systems, degradation patterns and the economic evaluation of technical failures in PV systems. He first studied photovoltaic and semiconductor technologies at the University of Applied Sciences in Jena/Germany and then environmental and energy technologies at the HTWK Leipzig/Germany, where he received his Master of Engineering in 2014.

After his studies in energy engineering, Cyril has been working with Franz Baumgartner in PV system research at the Institute of Energy Systems and Fluid-Engineering since 2019. Main focus of his research is laboratory testing of PV system components, where he examines the efficiency of PV inverters, the performance of module-level power electronics and transients of battery systems. His activities further include the simulation of PV performance in shaded conditions and heat pump - PV control strategies.