India-headquartered International Solar Alliance (ISA) will organize the World Solar Technology Summit for the first time on a virtual platform on September 8, 2020. The event will showcase state-of-the-art, next-generation technologies that can ramp up solar deployment at an affordable cost.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi will attend the inaugural, along with Ministers of all ISA member countries and high-level dignitaries from global R&D institutions.

The event will hold four technical sessions that would be available to the participants in English, Spanish, French and Arabic languages. Leading companies and research organisations from across the world will present their work during these sessions and deliberate on latest trends in solar technologies.

Topics to be covered include PV technology development and its future, recent advances (conversion efficiency improvements and declining costs) in PV modules and storage technologies, disruptive solar technologies in on-grid applications (whether ground-mounted, floating, or integrated in residential and commercial rooftops), and solar beyond the power sector.

The event will also see the launch of the ISA Journal on Solar Energy that would help authors from across the globe to publish their articles on solar energy. The articles in this journal would be reviewed by global experts.

The keynote address during the inaugural ceremony will be presented by Dr M. Stanley Whittingham—who won the 2019 Nobel Prize in Chemistry (along with John B. Goodenough and Akira Yoshino) for the revolutionizing discovery of the lithium-ion batteries.

The ISA aims at lowering the cost of technology and finance and thereby facilitate deployment of over 1,000 GW of solar energy and mobilize more than US$ 1,000 billion into solar power by 2030 in member countries. Till date, it has aggregated a pipeline of solar projects worth US$ 5.5 billion.