Building Europe’s biggest solar factory
With the support of the TANGO project, Italy’s 3Sun photovoltaic centre is set to become a gigawatt-scale factory for producing next-generation solar panels. These innovative panels feature a crystalline silicon cell sandwiched between two layers of ‘thin film’ silicon and are unique in that they can capture sunlight from both their front and their back surfaces. The result is more clean energy using less material and less space, at a lower cost. Offering a 15-fold increase in production capacity over standard panels, every year the factory will produce enough panels to supply 5 445 gigawatt-hours, enough renewable electricity to cover the annual energy needs of more than 2 million Italian households.
Keywords
Europe, climate neutrality, energy, renewables, fossil fuels, imports, research, synergy, funding, Clean energy transition