The first Solar Industry Forum, "High performance silicon ingots and wafers", was arranged at SINTEF and NTNU in Trondheim and took place on August 23rd in 2017.
One of the important promises of FME SUSOLTECH even before it formally started was to establish a new arena for knowledge sharing and interaction between research and industry partners, the so-called Solar Industry Forum.These meetings provide opportunities for networking, for drawing upon diverse experiences and lessons and provide important input to research activities. An important motivation behind the establishment of the Solar Industry Forum was the desire to establish an arena for generating new spin-off activities, in particular innovation projects and other projects with industry lead and/or participation. The Forum should facilitate a collective reflection and discussion to further strengthen solar cell related activities in Norway, both in research and industry.
The program for the first meeting was dominated by the industry partners of FME SUSOLTECH. NorSun, Norwegian Crystals, Elkem Solar, Steuler Solar, The Quartz Corporation and PVA all gave presentations at the meeting. An important aim for this particular meeting was to initiate a process devoted to the development of a roadmap for the R&D activities related to silicon ingots and wafers. After the meeting itself, the attendees were invited to visit the impressive laboratories for this research at SINTEF and NTNU. There was an informal dinner at the very end.
The meeting was very well attended by both industry and research partners and was an excellent start of the Solar Industry Forum meeting series.