This network establishes a scientific and technological base of experience and data, tools and procedures to which west European participants, in particular Germany and Spain, and countries from the NIS (starting with Russia and Uzbekistan) will contribute.

On the German and Spanish side (who jointly operate the only European solar test facility, Plataforma Solar de Almeria/Spain), information resulting from many projects, simulation programmes and experience are available from their bilateral co-operation as well as from their leading roles in the IEA-SolarPACES Programme and the EU Human Capital and Mobility Programme, respectively.

Russian institutes and scientists will provide their experience of projects on solar thermal power plants, on test facilities for materials research with solar energy, on solar driven endothermal reactions and polarised combined cycles.

Part of the co-operation is documentation on research and development institutes in the NIS relevant to the IEA-SolarPACES Programme.

The project will be subdivided into the following five activities with corresponding results: firslty, the ompendium on research organisations and industrial enterprises in Russia and other NIS countries involved in problems relevant to the SolarPACES Programme; secondly, the documentation of design features, experimental devices, measurement techniques and applications of solar furnaces; thirdly, the joint review (west Euopean-Russian) of the feasibility study on the Russian Kislovodsk solar power plant which uses a new concept of co-generation of electricity and heat; fourthly, the alternative analysis of hybrid fossil/solar power cycles and plants with the aim of increasing their energy conversion efficiency and improving ecological aspects of energy usage; and finally the development and testing at the Plataforma Solar de Almeria (Spain) of receiver-reactor and catalysts for solar driven endothermal reactions. The chemical receiver-reactor and catalysts for solar driven endothermal reactions, developed at the Boreskov Institute of Catalysis, Novosibirsk, Russia, will be tested at the Plataforma Solar de Almeria in Spain.