A Recap from Intersolar Europe 2023

By Sergio Sensini

A year ago, I wrote a short article titled “The Sun Still Shines,” describing the re-surgency of this market in the Western atmosphere.

In the meantime, another year went by; here we are again at the Intersolar Munich at a very vibrant Ulbrich booth that hosts heavy traffic. The dynamics of this business continue evolving.

Wolfgang Pranger, Christian Prischmann, Ed Treglia, Nikolaus Mitrovitz, and Peter Berghofer are my Ulbrich teammates present in Munich.

Good news for Ulbrich comes from the potential of signing two multi-year contracts with specific EU customers involved in non-traditional technology. Ribbon production would start at Ulbrich of Austria first, followed by Ulbrich in South Carolina (to support US-based new factories being built)

For standard technology, there is concern that producers will again undersell their products now that the supply chain is a bit more stable and freight times and costs are back to “pre-Covid” levels.

At Ulbrich, we do not want to participate in commodity-type business, certainly not out of our Specialty Wire Products Division in SC.

Intersolar 2023 is a huge and modern Show: glamorous booths, more than 100,000 visitors, a lot of action, and innovation in terms of power improvement, energy storage, and overall efficiency (mostly driven by perovskite and “tandem PV.” For reference, a tandem solar panel consists of 2 solar cells on top of each other. The top cell is made of perovskite, a calcium titanium oxide mineral that greatly improves efficiency. This cell converts part of the solar spectrum into electricity and transmits the infrared light to the bottom silicon solar cell)

A big boost for US-made solar production arises from Government incentives and subsidies (Inflation Act).

Some concerns among European companies come from the uncertainty of the US political future, specifically the 2024 elections, as differing candidates have differing ideas on investing in “renewable solutions.”

To learn more about our latest and greatest solar modular technologies, visit www.pvribbon.com!