Solar photovoltaic (PV) has become the world’s fastest-growing energy technology, with an annual global market surpassing for the first time in 2018 the 100 Gigawatt (GW) level and cumulative capacity of 583.5 GW in 2019. However, in order to produce large amounts of energy and to avoid increased energy transmission costs, solar power plants must be located close to the demand centres. Yet, it is a problem to require vast surfaces of land near densely populated areas where the power is consumed. This is specially a problem in Europe, which by far has the smallest average size of a solar PV plant in the world. Floating PV (FPV) plants have opened up new opportunities for facing these land restrictions. Nevertheless, this market is currently concentrated in reservoirs and lakes. Offshore and near-shore FPV systems are still in a nascent stage due to additional challenges faced by non-sheltered sea conditions: waves and winds are stronger, implying that mooring, anchoring and dynamic load capacity becomes even more critical due to the increased frequency of high wave- and wind-loads. The BOOST will address these challenges with a new FPV system partly inspired by the floating and mooring technology that has been used over 20 years in rough Norwegian waters by the fish farming industry, combined with a disruptive and patented floating hydro-elastic membrane (<1mm thickness). The hydro-elastic membrane is attached to an outer perimeter of buoyant tubing so that the floater is not dragged under by the mooring, even in strong currents, winds and waves, similar to the effect of oil on troubled water. The validation of this technology in non-sheltered sea waters lead consortium expects to reach an installed capacity of 1,750 MW for the 5 years (6.2% of the SAM), contributing to avoid CO2 emission of 4,120 kt (but each PV plant will last for at least 25 years, so the long-term impact is 5 times larger). It will generate to the consortium accumulated profits above €94m.

Renewable energies provide clean, inexhaustible, and increasingly competitive energy source differing from fossil fuels in diversity, abundance, and potential for use. Solar energy capacity in European Union has been increasing in recent years with Germany, Spain and Poland leading the way in new installations. In 2022, the European Union added a record-breaking 41.4GW of solar power, increasing the total solar power capacity by 25%. Within the solar energy market, perovskite-based solar cells (PSCs) will contribute significantly towards the overall mix of solar energy due to PSCs differentiators compare to other solar Photovoltaic technologies of: (i) low-cost, (ii) excellent power-to-weight performance and (iii) high power conversion efficiency (PCE) of 25.7% at lab-scale in 2022, up from 3.8% in 2009. A key challenge of PSC technology is replication at large-scale as there is a substantial difference in performance from small-area cell (lab-scale) and large-area module performance. PERSEUS is designed to establish a foundation for PSC production and application development within Europe. The project will develop and demonstrate 3 different large area PSC architectures that offer broad adoption potential across multiple industries such as Floating Photovoltaics, Building Integrated and Applied Photovoltaics, Agri-Photovoltaics and Urban Photovoltaics. As each end-user requires different properties (e.g. performance, lifetime and cost targets), PERSEUS will develop parallel solutions to meet end-user needs covering: (1) single-junction opaque modules (2) semi-transparent modules and (3) 4T Perovskite + CIGS tandem module architectures. These will be translated into ‘blueprints’, of multi-stage manufacturing line(s) which have validated, matched outputs and allow immediate post-project progress to the commercialization phase.