Background
Solar energy (including PV, solar thermal and CSP technologies) is on a strong growth trajectory everywhere in the world, in both developed and developing countries. Solar electricity costs continue to fall rapidly. The cost of PV electricity, already lower than 20 US cents per kWh, will drop to less than 15 US cents per kWh in much of the OECD by 2012 - and in some cases to less than 10 US cents per kWh.
Blessed with plentiful sunshine, Sicily is one of the first Europe's region that has already reached the "grid-parity", namely the point at which the price of photovoltaic electricity equals that of power purchased from the grid. The island is experiencing a real boom in both major domains of the solar energy industry -- PV and solar thermal.
Earlier this year, a new company started production in Sicily of thin-film modules using state-of-the-art technology. With the ongoing decline of the modules price and its large > (5 m) population, Sicily is certainly one of the Europe's regions that will experience double-digit growth in coming years.
Over 3 days of conference and exhibition, new products and technical innovations from all areas of solar energy technologies and from all over the world will be on show.
Themes:
* Solar cooling
* Concentrated solar power
* Thin film photovoltaics
* Solar electric vehicle
* BIPV
* Solar thermal
* Solar economy (Helionomics)
Call for oral abstracts deadline - 31 January 2011
Website: http://www.solar-conference.eu/
