AMPERE: a new project for innovative heterojunction manufacturing solutions to improve competitiveness of the European PV manufacturing industry.

The European PV manufacturing industry has faced strong foreign competition in the last years, which has led to a dramatic reduction of its production capacity. It has completely shifted from a massive leadership at the beginning of the new millennium, with five EU companies in the top ten manufacturers, to a situation of survival where few of them are struggling in an actual extremely competitive market. Hopefully, Europe still has solid industrial assets consisting of silicon & material suppliers, and high quality equipment suppliers that constitute the core of a value chain to be rebuilt. Innovative manufacturing solutions, that substantially improve and reboot the competitiveness of the European PV sector, are mandatory to win competitiveness worldwide PV market. AMPERE, acronym for Automated photovoltaic cell and Module industrial Production to regain and secure European Renewable Energy market, was born for these purposes. AMPERE project aims to the setting-up of an innovative 100 MWp full-scale automated pilot line in production environment and at the same time to a rapid scale up to 250 MWp paving the way to the GWp scale