SFERA-III · Solar Facilities for the European Research Area - Third Phase

The overall objective of this project is to carry on with the work done during the past 8 years for the sustainability of the activities of the European advance solar laboratories involved in SFERA and SFERA 2nd phase, and extend these activities to the new solar laboratories which will bring added value to this European Research Infrastructure for Concentrating Solar Power. The specific goal is to contribute to ensure the long-term sustainability of these European advance solar laboratories, supporting Europe as a global leader in solar research infrastructures.Those activities will include (i) networking activities to further develop the cooperation between the research infrastructures, the scientific community, industries and other stakeholders; (ii) transnational access activities aiming at providing access to all European researchers from both academia and industry to singular scientific and technological solar research infrastructures; and (iii) joint research activities whose sole purpose is to improve the integrated services provided by the infrastructure.All this would contribute to achieve the scientific excellence of these research infrastructures (RIs), strength the interaction between the Concentrating Solar Thermal (CST) industry and these RIs, strength innovation further, develop new activities, and also drive the productivity and competitiveness of the European economy contributing to the creation of new jobs in the CST sector. Furthermore, these activities will contribute to the development of new common standards that will support the CST industry in the development of new components and systems and in the building of new commercial installations. At the same time, these standards will also support the European Commission in the development of the European policy for the CST sector.