International Solar Alliance (ISA), an alliance of 121 countries initiated by India in 2015, is going to organize the First World Solar Technology Summit on a virtual platform on September 08, 2020. R.K. Singh, President of the ISA Assembly and Union Minister of State for Power and New & Renewable Energy (IC) and Skill Development & Entrepreneurship, has published the details.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi is expected to grace the inaugural, which will be attended by Ministers of all ISA-Member Countries and Global Institutions. Most of the partner-countries are sunshine countries, which lie either completely or partly between the Tropic of Cancer and the Tropic of Capricorn. A plethora of speakers will set the tone of the deliberations focusing on innovative, cost effective, affordable solar technologies.

According to the union minister, who also invited all the stakeholders to participate in the summit, the objective of the event is to gather attention on state-of-the-art technologies as well as next-generation technologies which will provide impetus to the efforts towards harnessing the solar energy more efficiently. ISA will also use this occasion to launch the ISA Journal on Solar Energy (I JOSE), which would act as a unified platform for authors from across the globe to publish their articles on solar energy. The articles in this journal would be reviewed by global experts and could reach the Member countries through ISA’s vast network of NFPs (National Focal Points) and STAR (Solar Technology and Application Resource) centers.

The event chart is as follows:
First Session – Vision 2030 & Beyond: The overall context of PV technology development and its future, on its way towards becoming the first source of energy worldwide, with PV technologies supplying 70 percent of the world’s electricity generation.
Second Session – Towards a Decarbonised Grid: The most recent advances (conversion efficiency improvements and declining costs) regarding key components such as PV modules and storage technologies.
Third Session: Disruptive Solar Technologies: On-grid applications, whether ground-mounted, floating, or integrated in residential and commercial rooftops.
Fourth Session – Solar Beyond the Power Sector: Innovative applications where PV is used to move, heat, cool, and drive eco-friendly industrial processes and produce fuels as well as off-grid applications, to provide universal access to energy.

2019’s Nobel Laureate Dr. M. Stanley Whittingham, who was awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry (jointly with John B Goodenough & Akira Yoshino) for the revolutionizing discovery of the lithium ion batteries, will be presenting the Keynote Address during the Inaugural Ceremony.