Vienna, Austria played host to the 2nd World Conference and Exhibition on PV Solar Energy Conversion in July 1998. With nearly 2 500 delegates and over 1 100 papers, the event - which was again perfectly organised by WIP - was by far the biggest meeting event.

The clear consensus of opinion among the participants was that PV is booming. This was reflected in strongly encouraging speeches from keynote speakers including Kunisuke Konno of NEDO, Japan, James Rannels from the US DOE and Wolfgang Palz of the European Commission.

Japan's commitment to PV technology and the promising progress being made under the national policy on New Energy Introduction was made clear when Konno reported the upward revision of the country's year 2010 installed capacity target from 4 600 MWp (the target set in 1994) to 5 000 MWp. Subsidies for PV installed on public sector and residential buildings have driven up installed generating capacity by an average of 45% each year since 1991 to 90 MWp at the end of 1997. R&D efforts are now concentrating on improving thin-film module efficiencies and cutting inverter unit costs to help realise the government's goal of economically viable PV technology for the Japanese market within the next decade.

Rannel's state-of-the-industry presentation pointed to the massive demand from Japan as the dominant force behind the recent rapid expansion in sales. But he also highlighted the continued growth in professionalism within the industry as a whole - giving customers more of the products they want at the right quality. These are the essential foundations for major industry expansion that will drive the cost reductions that have been promised for so long.

Palz highlighted major new plant construction across Europe as further evidence of the 'PV industry explosion' since 1997. Such expansion will be much needed to support the growing number of large integrated energy projects materialising across Europe, particularly in Germany and the Netherlands and the ongoing programmes in Japan and the USA. Gernot Oswald, MD of Siemens Solar, struck a cautionary note, pointing out that previous predictions of the rate of PV market take-off were invariably over-optimistic. Siemens are "planning for 15% (growth) and dreaming of 25%". Even this would only equate to 1% of the world's electricity coming from PV by 2025-2040. The PV industry cannot afford to relax - problems such as the solar grade silicon shortage still need to be properly resolved and subsidies will still be a very real part of the development of the industry for some time. Nevertheless, Vienna demonstrated that the commitment to succeed is very much here.

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