The round of technical consultations held in Egypt at the end of October 2104 confirmed the real and urgent need to upgrade the PV standard framework of the Country. This is due to the expected rapid expansion of the market once the feed-in tariff will be operational, as recently announced. Egyptian Organization of Standardization & Quality (EOS) – a key stakeholder in this process- is ready to receive MED-DESIRE proposal for the introduction of new standards on PV and asked for technical support to assess this proposal.
Testing facilities should be upgraded accordingly, even if the full implementation of an accredited solar testing lab is a very lengthy process and is well beyond the scope of the project. CIEMAT is now working on drafting the proposal for a minimum set of standards to be shared with ENEA and NREA.
The second WP5 pillar activity – technical training – will be focused on vocational training. Indeed vocational training is one of the most needed parts of the Egyptian education system for renewable energies, as the stakeholder consultation highlighted. ENEA will provide its experience and its infrastructures (i.e. e-learning platform) to set up a course for trainers on PV according to European standards. The course will be held in Alexandria in spring 2015.