Fostering a Next Generation of European Photovoltaic Society through Open Science

Project Information

GRECO

Grant agreement ID: 787289

DOI

10.3030/787289

Project closed

EC signature date 18 April 2018

Start date 1 June 2018

End date 31 May 2021

Funded under

• Integrate society in science and innovation issues, policies and activities in order to integrate citizens' interests and values and to increase the quality, relevance, social acceptability and sustainability of research and innovation outcomes in various fields of activity from social innovation to areas such as biotechnology and nanotechnology

Total cost

€ 3 116 595,00

EU contribution

€ 2 973 220,00

Coordinated by

UNIVERSIDAD POLITECNICA DE MADRID
Spain

Periodic Reporting for period 2 - GRECO (Fostering a Next Generation of European Photovoltaic Society through Open Science)

Reporting period: 2019-09-01 to 2021-05-31

Summary of the context and overall objectives of the project

What is the problem/issue being addressed by GRECO?

GRECO overall objective is to bridge the gap between the theory behind Open Science and its practical implementation, by generating a valid, inclusive, and understandable rationale model. It is important to note that GRECO understands Open Science as a combination of tools and methods that make science more open, accesible and democratic to researchers, industries, civil society and citizens.
GRECO has learnt by doing, facing in a real research project the difficulties that technical researchers have when trying to adopt Open Science as main methodology ruling their investigations. We have tested different Open Science approaches and tried to smooth the way between principles/theory and practice. To accomplish such mission, we operationalized a demonstrator within a project researching on solar photovoltaic solutions, but our results can be implemented to other scientific domain.s

Why is it important for society?

Benefits from Open Science are well-known: better informed society, reinforced international cooperation, fostered disruptive innovations, boosted economic growth, etc. Thus, any attempt to motivate researchers to be more open is needed for a major efficiency on science, and more considering that there are a lot of public funds invested. The generation of ad-hoc solutions and methods to pave the way towards the practical implementation of Open Science might reduce the reluctance of some researchers to adopt Open Science tools. GRECO has directly addressed the doubts, fears and concerns of researchers rather than imagine them, so we expect to have given light to questions that in the future could be arisen by other colleagues.

What are the overall objectives?

Objective 1. To obtain an inclusive, validated, and understandable rationale pilot for Open Science ready to be applied to a wide spectrum of research projects.
Objective 2. To evidence the impact of Open Science and RRI approaches
Objective 3. To develop a model to come up with a Responsible Citizen Science Initiative exemplified for Photovoltaics
Objective 4. To carry out a Mutual and Mobilization Learning Action Plan as a way for ensuring socially acceptable innovative solutions.
Objective 5. To operationalize quadruple helix innovation collaborations in research projects.
Objective 6. To empower Citizens in the scientific endeavour.
Objective 7. To provide high innovative research solutions using GRECO Open Science pilot.

Work performed from the beginning of the project to the end of the period covered by the report and main results achieved so far

From the beginning of the project to the end of the action we have worked in six workpackages performing the activities and achieving the results mentioned below:

WP 1.Open Science Coordination
Within this workpackage we have set a Social Advisory Board that has assessed the quality of our work during the whole project. In addition, we have carried the work of understanding the main concerns of researchers towards the adoption of Open Science and have developed proper actions to address them; for instance: preparing ad-hoc training courses and editing the Open Science guide for researchers. The guide was openly peer reviewed by more than 80 experts and it is fully available at https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.4762618. Within this WP we also carried out the work to come up with a novel citizen science initiative. As a result, generationsolar.eu was created.
WP 2. Ageing and Reparation of PV modules.
By involving more than 100 PV facilities from the society we have been able to analyze how real aging and degradation occurs in photovoltaics modules. In addition, we have been able to observe the type of defects appearing in the installations enabling in-situ solutions for repairing them and enabling circular economy. Thanks to such society engagement we have demonstrated how science can be done together with citizens, and produce results that could not be obtained otherwise. As main result of this workpackage we produced five Video Tutorials about how to repair defects of PV modules https://short.upm.es/la47h and we analyzed in the public document “Deliverable 2.2” how applying these solutions in the region of Andalucía (Spain) could impact from an economic point of view.
WP 3. PV irrigation solutions for Large Irrigator Communities using high voltage pumps
Here engaging with all stakeholders of the irrigation sector was needed to reach an agreement on the most timely an adequate technical solution. It was interesting to note how preconceived ideas must be tested against reality to see how geographical location or the stakeholders group can define the properties and qualities of an innovation. Lessons learnt on engagement have been really interesting and have been collected in D3.1. Within GRECO we set the requested technical solutions by the majority of southern farmers and a 360º video was shot as a showroom of the technology https://short.upm.es/xxyxd.
WP 4. High Penetration of Photovoltaics.
This workpackage has dealt with those technical innovations that are still not on the market to demonstrate how citizens and civil society can be engaged and also to explore the use of tools that facilitates the promotion of Open Science, such as open software or open notebooks. Some of the results produced include: A document with the results obtained from the public dialogues with more than 100 stakeholders from 6 countries on the future perspectives of PV innovations https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.3554901 a new PV technology for achieving high efficiency and, a collaborative open database on the physical properties of some interesting novel materials for the solar sector which are the perovskites.
WP 5. Communication, dissemination and exploitation coordination.
Exploitation, dissemination and communication activities are crucial to ensure that GRECO project concept, activities and results are shared with and understood by relevant stakeholders in a clear and consistent manner. The interested reader can check the public deliverable 5.4 on the communication, dissemination and exploitation actions to understand all the actions we have performed to give a proper impact to our 80 generated results. The community set in ZENODO is a repository of all our activity: https://zenodo.org/communities/greco-787289/
WP 6. Management of the Consortium
The WP6 has dealt with the overall project management of the project with the goal of ensuring the accomplishment of the project objectives on time, under budget and at the highest quality.
WP7. Ethics
Within this WP we have managed all the ethics requirements of a project involving third parties’ engagement, personal data and third countries.

Progress beyond the state of the art and expected potential impact (including the socio-economic impact and the wider societal implications of the project so far)

GRECO has approached Open Science from a bottom-up vision, considering researchers as end-users and trying to provide them with the solutions they demand. Probably this is the most relevant progress made by GRECO. The impact of GRECO can be tracked looking at the following facts: our Guide counts with more than 800 downloads, all our results are fully available through ZENODO, the EC portal and YouTube -number of views and downloads are available-, we have inspired changes in our Institutions contributing to the expansion of the RRI principles, we have achieved two new European Projects based on the networks and results obtained in GRECO, etc.
As for other impacts, such the socio-economic or the environmental ones, we invite the reader to check at our deliverables where we have analyzed such questions in depth.

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