The objective of this project is to facilitate the large-scale deployment of solar electricity/heat generation in the 2 Seas and support the EU to meet its target of 20% energy consumption from renewables by 2020. The consortium tests and demonstrates a series of innovative solar solutions on historical/public buildings and households (with focus on lowincome families) in both urban and rural settings. Each demonstrator reduces the cost of solar energy generation in combination with innovative storage technology to enhance efficiencies and greater use at point of generation rather than export to the grid.

SOLARISE  brings together partners from business, academic and public sectors and citizens to stimulate change in the current situation and delivers a comprehensive business case that looks at future financing and investment opportunities in solar generation. Essentially the project helps drive CO2 savings, grid balancing and provide a means to reduce energy bills.

The main outputs of the SOLARISE project are a series of solar energy demonstration projects delivered across the partnership in both urban and rural environments and on domestic (with particular focus on low-income households) and public buildings (with focus on historical ones). The technology demonstration projects are evaluated and reviewed by partners to deliver an Economic Case and Strategy for the wide-scale deployment and replicability of solar energy with storage systems and provide a framework for commercialization of the technology throughout the 2 Seas Region. The partnership organises a campaign for stakeholders and deliver a Solar Roadmap to accelerate solar power adoption in pilot areas. It disseminates project results through conferences, tailored seminars, training events and via a solar energy dedicated web-portal. A guidepackage about legislation, market, technologies and best practices in the 2Seas is one of the outputs. 

The integrated approach of SOLARISE requires high-level cooperation; regionally (City-pilots), nationally (focus on legislation and rollout of project’s results) and across the 2 Seas Region. The added value of territorial cooperation includes several elements:

• much of the technology exists but is fragmented and little known
• solutions exist in one territory but not others
• business cases for solar energy production depend on the policy/legislative framework, offering cross border policy learning
• integrated approaches (e.g. storage) have high initial costs.To bridge the ‘valley of death’ partners need work together to promote innovations and increase demand.

Differences in scale, technology and organization across partners triggers active learning, cross-border cooperation and knowledge transfer. Hardware investments in different pilots makes knowledge development possible, supports demonstration & future decision making about solar power conversion, storage and grid connection.