Solarvalley Mitteldeutschland

Grid parity for solar power in Germany

Optimisation of products and production technologies in photovoltaics

According to EU directives, 20 percent of primary energy are to come from renewable sources by the year 2020. Photovoltaics is a major pillar in achieving this goal.

For solar power to become competitive, the cost of manufacturing solar modules must be reduced significantly and their efficiency increased at the same time.

The federal states Saxony, Saxony-Anhalt and Thuringia have the highest density of photovoltaics companies in Europe. In the Solarvalley Mitteldeutschland cluster, the partners from industry and research work on optimising products and production technologies in photovoltaics. 98 co-ordinated projects are working on the fundamental issues along the entire value-added chain of crystalline and thin-film silicon solar modules and preparing their transfer to production.

The Leading-Edge Cluster comprises 29 companies, nine research facilities and four universities. The partners include leading manufacturers such as Bosch, Schott, PV Crystalox, Q-Cells and SMA, as well as suppliers such as Jenoptik, Roth & Rau and Jonas & Redmann.

The cluster is striving to achieve a measurable breakthrough in the use of solar power in Germany. A mile-stone along the way is the grid parity of photovoltaically generated electricity from 2013 at the latest.