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31st European Photovoltaic Solar Energy Conference and Exhibition; 2952-2954, By end of 2014, about 88 GW of photovoltaic electricity systems have been installed, producing 2.8% of all the European electricity consumed [1]. This exceeds already the target of 84.4GWp set by Europe's Member States in their National Renewable Energy Action Plans (NREAP) delivered to the European Commission in 2010. However, deployment of PV is very varied across Member States, either due to different ambitions in the original NREAPs, or due to the different weight renewable energy plays within a Member-State's general energy policy. Regarding PV deployment, Europe is still far from implementing a European Renewable Energy Union. Whilst technical barriers have been very successfully reduced by European and international standards development, regulatory differences across Member States are increasing and lead to a situation where PV has achieved a electricity share of almost 8% in some countries, between 1% and 2% in many others, or none at all. The presentation will examine a number of facts which explain Europe's situation in the deployment of PV towards the 2020 renewable energy target, will substantiate the assessment by providing robust data and will provide recommendations to harmonize Member States deployment policies.

31st European Photovoltaic Solar Energy Conference and Exhibition; 3034-3041, The Covenant of Mayors is a European movement involving local authorities voluntarily committing to meet and exceed the European Union's 20% CO2 reduction objective for 2020 by increasing energy efficiency and use of renewable energy sources. Photovoltaics (PV) can play an important role in this as a distributed form of electricity production, adaptable to the urban environment and to see the impact of this a preliminary analysis has been made of the Covenant of Mayors' plans for PV.. The data reveal widely varying predicted contributions of PV to local energy production for 2020, many of which are an order of magnitude below expected level of total potential for PV energy yield for a given urban area.. There is therefore huge scope to increase local PV electricity with efficient policy measures, providing also a powerful boost to the European PV market.

We present the calculation of Levelized Cost of Energy (LCOE) for PV systems in Africa and the Middle East. The calculations are based on estimates of the PV energy productivity from satellite data combined with models for the performance of both grid-connected and off-grid PV systems. The PV productivity figures can then be combined with scenarios for the cost of PV system installations in terms of initial investment, operation and maintenance, as well as discount rate for the LCOE calculation. The results show that using realistic estimates of installation and maintenance costs, and 5% p.a. discount rate, the LCOE of PV electricity is below 7 c€/kWh in most of Northern and Southern Africa, rising to 9-10c€ in the cloudy tropical belt near the Equator. If the discount rate is 10%, the LCOE is 9-10c€/kWh in most of Africa, rising to 13-14c€ in tropical West Africa. This shows clearly the importance of a good financing framework. Calculations of the performance of PV minigrid systems shows that the electricity cost from these systems is higher, at 18-25 c€, but it is still competitive with many other options for rural electrification., 1st Africa Photovoltaic Solar Energy Conference and Exhibition Proceedings, AfricaPVSEC 2014

The Joint Research Centre of the European Commission JRC has developed the African Renewable Energy Technology Platform AFRETEP platform with 760+ African and European members, cooperating institutions for research. As a part of the project the JRC has provided training to nearly a hundred African academics in regional trainings on the state-of-art rural electrification technologies; these can also be followed online in web-streaming. The project has developed mapping applications and methods to support national governments and agencies to decide which energy technology options would better deliver their goals of rural electrification and made these available to the continents scientific communities in publications. The methods -developed by the JRC platform- take into account the diversity of energy resources, coupled with the existing grid, transport infrastructure, hydropower resources, the current diesel and photovoltaic costs, to map the current least-cost electricity options for rural electrification. So far, geographical datasets have been made publicly available (www.afretep.net) and several published papers and conferences have facilitated the spread of the results to the interested stakeholders. Most of these results are available on the Platform and the JRC websites., 1st Africa Photovoltaic Solar Energy Conference and Exhibition Proceedings, AfricaPVSEC 2014

Recognizing the issues of land shortage and growing concerns for protecting natural lands, installers, project developers with the help of scientists and engineers try to locate alternative spots for PV-systems installations. In the present paper the authors describe a novel approach, installing PV systems on the outside face of dams. This approach, although currently applied very moderately, has certain advantages that favor even large-scale systems with a capacity of several MWs. In the case of energy-producing hydroelectric dams, the created hybrid system can be notably efficient. The intermittent solar energy will be counterbalanced by hydropower. At the same time, peak demand will be partially covered by PV energy production, ensuring energy availability. Recent research reviewed by the authors has revealed that a notable number of water reservoirs in African continent are under-utilized or don't serve any energy production purpose. That unexploited energy potential apart from being utilized through hydropower development can also be amplified by simultaneous solar system installation. Supplementary power capacity will increase the total energy production and result to economic and environmental benefits., 1st Africa Photovoltaic Solar Energy Conference and Exhibition Proceedings, AfricaPVSEC 2014

The international community is committed to supporting Africa to address its energy challenges but the definition of continental priorities and ways of implementation is under national, sub-regional and regional African policy domains. The scope of this work is to present an analytical easy-to-use web-based tool, RE²nAF, which enables geographically based analysis for off-grid electricity production options in Africa. Decision makers, academia, investors and other stakeholders can benefit from its use in deciding which energy technology options would better deliver electrification services to rural areas in Africa, after exploring the impact on least cost option caused by simulating different scenarios., 1st Africa Photovoltaic Solar Energy Conference and Exhibition Proceedings, AfricaPVSEC 2014