The PV industry’s massive growth demands constant improvement in the quality of products and projects. However, the price erosion of PV modules and the resulting price pressure have made it difficult to maintain high quality standards. Dedicated to this topic, the Solar Quality Summit was held for the third consecutive year in Barcelona from February 18–19, 2025.
More than 250 attendees, including project developers, asset managers, investors, operation and maintenance professionals, technology companies and grid operators from 20 countries discussed the industry’s key challenges in quality management.
Experience from 30 years of solar energy
In the summit’s opening session, Walburga Hemetsberger, CEO of the European solar association SolarPower Europe, pointed out that the first European solar installations were now almost 30 years old. “It is important to discuss all lessons learned from this period,” she said. What trends in quality assurance were observed in Barcelona?
Spotlight on digital technologies
Kate Blades, Head of Quality at Lightsource BP, sees advanced digital tools and technologies on the rise. At the event, she cited drones for defect detection and digital twins for creating digital copies of systems.
These technologies are primarily used in operation and maintenance (O&M). Speakers highlighted a paradigm shift from reactive to predictive maintenance at the Solar Quality Summit.
Data was another key topic at the event. Discussions focused on how to achieve greater uniformity in data collection, which is important for the use of artificial intelligence-based solutions in the solar industry, among other things. David Moser, research group leader for renewable energies at Eurac Research, also pointed out the importance of continuous data processing in the project cycle. “Information must be used at every step of a project,” he said.
Battery storage and cybersecurity emerge as new challenges
Cybersecurity is also becoming increasingly important in quality assurance. Cybersecurity attacks on energy infrastructure are becoming more frequent, in part due to the large number of players in the energy system, which increases the risk of an intervention.
Battery storage is seen as a trump card in the energy transition, so its quality assurance was also an important topic at the Solar Quality Summit. With the battery storage market expected to grow sevenfold over the next five years, there are still many improvements left to be made. Nicolas Depoorter, Ngen's Country Managing Director for Spain & Portugal, said that a well-functioning regulation is key to standalone battery storage. The need for standardized grid codes for BESS was also discussed in Barcelona. If PV and storage systems are to provide more grid stability services to stabilize the frequency, it is important that inverters and power electronics use standardized codes. “Moving from a technology that follows the grid to a technology that actively shapes the grid is not an easy task,” A. David Cruanes Lee, Technical Director Ibera, TBEA Sunoasis, said about this.
At the summit, SolarPower Europe presented the new O&M guidelines, which focus on how to meet certain challenges, including increasingly extreme weather conditions, such as hail damage, and the theft of PV systems.
Solar Quality Summit will return to Barcelona in 2026
As the solar industry matures and improves with each year, quality assurance is a must. To meet this requirement, industry players need opportunities for networking and knowledge sharing. To this end, the Solar Quality Summit will return to Barcelona in 2026.