PILATUS
PILATUS is a 3-year project aiming to demonstrate three digitalised pilot lines for the production in Europe of silicon wafers, solar cells, and solar modules.
Uniresearch Role
Uniresearch is the official coordinator of PILATUS, which means that we oversee the day-to-day management of the project. Next to the management activities of Uniresearch in PILATUS, we are also leading the tasks on dissemination, communication, and exploitation.
Project
The PILATUS project aims to scale up the production of the next-generation tunnel-IBC cells and modules that combine the silicon heterojunction (SHJ) technology together with the interdigitated back-contacted (IBC) architecture in a simple manner.
The project will be able to demonstrate the outcome at pilot line level, using the ‘best in class’/State-of-Art solution, but – at the same time – will work in parallel on specific technological aspects which still have significant room for improvement. This may offer even higher performance, lower costs, and increased versatility of the PILATUS solution. The main objectives are to
- Demonstrate the high-volume production of Silicon Heterojunction (SHJ) tunnel-Interdigitated Back Contact (tunnel-IBC) PV
- Validate and pre-certify performance of PV cell and module
- Eco-design of tunnel-IBC PV modules and manufacturing lines
- Demonstrate favourable cost/Wp of the SHJ-IBC modules
Facts & Figures
- Start date: 1 November 2022
- Duration: 36 months
- Total budget: 21.2 M€
- EC funding: 10.1 M€
- EC contract number: 101084046
The project consortium consists of 19 partners from 8 EU countries.