A total of six intensive hands on workshops, five webinars and 2 PhD summer schools were conducted. The topics included fundamentals of PV, battery and energy storage systems, PV forecasting, fault detection and degradation, PV inverters, impedance spectroscopy and Synthesis and characterisation of perovskite solar cells. The workshops included lectures, lab demonstrations and hands on experiments. They were attended mostly by participants from the three institutions and also from researchers from industry and the MENA country. The researchers from PVlab (UCY) obtained access and training on unique equipment (such as SYSLAB of DTU and smarTEST of AIT) and methodologies that do not exist at UCY. The webinars organized after each training allowed for the training to be accessible to more researchers from UCY and the Cypriot Industry. Furthermore, UCY and AIT had started an extensive collaboration through a PhD student exchange in the field of mechanical defects of PV modules. All the activities led to a total of 5 conference joint publications and presentations and two submitted articles for peer review. This is helping increase the research profile and capacity of the PVlab. Two very successful thematic workshop in Cyprus co-hosted by UCY, DTU and AIT were completed with a about 50 industrial and academic Cypriot participants. The intensive workshops covered topics ranging from fundamentals, emerging technologies, smart grids, network integration, funding and investment opportunities. The workshops looked at how all those developments apply and impact the Cyprus PV industry. There were lots of constructive discussions on how the TwinPV consortium can work with the industry to help them take advantage of upcoming PV opportunities in Cyprus and the surrounding region. The final dissemination and networking event was held at UCY in November of 2018 and it attracted participation from key academics and industry from Cyprus, Europe, Jordan, Qatar, Abu Dhabi and USA.
In addition the partners have participated together in a large number of competitive European and Cypriot grant proposals in the field of PV and grid integration and are currently partners in 6 joint projects.
