Solar Power Europe shares insights from Solar Quality Summit Europe 2025, focusing on improving solar projects quality, battery storage, artificial intelligence and skill development.
From February 18-19, members of the Operations and Maintenance (O&M), Asset Management, Engineering, Procurement and Construction (EPC) community participated in SolarPower Europe’s annual Solar Quality Summit Europe 2025 event. The event is intended to promote the long-term quality of solar power projects in Europe.
Important insights from day one
Walburga Hemetsberger, CEO of SolarPower Europe, held a meeting with Markus Elsaesser, CEO of Solar Promotion GmbH, to highlight how. “Solar is not just a solution to climate change, it is the solution that Europe needs for its competitiveness and overall security. Providing climate goals means committing to quality assurance.”
Walburga Hemetsberger, CEO of SolarPower Europe Opening Solar Quality Summit Europe 2025
Following this, Nikoletta Fodor, European Project Officer at SolarPower, moderated a panel session to announce the quality costs of solar power generation. During the discussion, Lightsource BP’s Quality Director Kate Blades outlined the method. “Prevention is better than treatment. This is the real philosophy we support at Lightsource BP. Quality is cost, but it is done right, providing returns and competitive advantage.”
In the afternoon, Nikoletta Fodor, Project Officer at SolarPower Europe, launched the organization’s new O&M Best Practice Guidelines Version 6.0, highlighting the report “is a unique and key set of recommendations from the industry that demonstrates the importance of harmonizing best practices as digital technology evolves and keeping the deployment of the sun growing.” In this report, more than 30 experts in SolarPower Europe’s Lifecycle Quality Workstream demonstrate knowledge and experience from across the solar sector, including operation and maintenance (O&M), recycling and circularity, waste management, utility scale solar, and manufacturing backgrounds.
On the day of the day, Thérèse O Donoghue, Press and Communications Advisor at SolarPower Europe, moderated the session at a presentation by Michael Schmela, Director of Market Intelligence at SolarPower Europe, moderated Simon Dupond, policy advisor for electricity markets and finance, and Molly Morgan, senior PV Anast at CRU. During his presentation, Shumela said, “Renewable energy, electrification and flexibility prevent 151 million tonnes of CO2 emissions each year… We need to embark on a flexible electrification revolution!”
Day 2: Navigating the challenges and innovation of battery energy storage and AI applications
The second day of the meeting began with a discussion moderated by SolarPower market analyst Antonio Arruebo, which began with a session on overcoming challenges to deploying battery energy storage systems (BESS). During the discussion, Nicholas Deptarter, Ngen’s country managing director for Spain and Portugal, said: “It’s like a roller coaster. The lack of harmony between regulations and permits is a problem. In Portugal, there are no standards and storage regulations.”
On the second day, the Supernova project held two workshops to leverage the possibilities of artificial intelligence (AI) for quality assurance and optimize data sharing between O&M service providers, asset managers and owners. The first workshop explored how to manage and organize large amounts of data using AI, as well as solutions available through instructional tuning of large-scale language models (LLMS). “We are committed to providing a range of services to our customers,” said Miguel Herrero, senior market advisor at PVCase. AI drives business growth and electricity demand. “The Supernova project is a Horizon Europe-funded initiative aimed at establishing quality and high performance solar PV projects.
Advances in skill development in the solar PV sector
Other highlights included discussions on strengthening skills for excellence in the solar PV sector, with initiatives such as the Reskill4Netzero and the Global Solar Council (GSC) Solar Training Standard Initiative. Funded by the European Union through the Erasmus+ programme for training and education, the Reskill4Netzero project aims to create a well-defined skill strategy for jobs in demand across the renewable energy sector. SolarPower Europe leads project communications. The GSC initiative aims to establish training standards for global industry, increase workforce efficiency, ensure safe solar power, and unify the industry through universal and transferable skills.
During the Solar Quality Summit, the European Technology and Innovation Platform for Solar Power (ETIP PV) Digitalised Workstream held a workshop on the cyber resilience of solar PV systems to investigate strategies to mitigate cyber threats and protect solar PV infrastructure. ETIP PV is a European Commission-supported forum that connects research and industry experts that form the Solar PV’s EU research and innovation agenda. SolarPower Europe, along with WIP renewable energy, is currently chairing the ETIP PV secretariat.
Emphasizing quality for a sustainable future
Michael Schmela, Market Intelligence Director at SolarPower Europe, looked back on the important takeaways of the meeting and closed the meeting. Repeated messages amplified over two days cost a quality, but when done correctly, are key to promoting returns, strengthening competitive advantages and driving the solar revolution.
SolarPower Europe and Intersolar were proud to be supported by this year’s Solar Quality Summit Supernova project, UNEF, the Spanish Solar Association and the Supernova project.
This article will also be featured in the 21st edition of Quarterly Publication.
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