Specialization: Solar Energy
The profile Solar Energy addresses all aspects of photovoltaic technology, from the design of a PV cell to the implementation of PV systems in the electricity grid. Students are free to compose their own specializations by choosing from a list of courses, in consultation with their thesis supervisors.
Courses
| Q2 | Q3 | Q4 | Q5 | Q6 |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| ET4376 – Photovoltaic Basics | ET4377 – Photovoltaic Technologies | ET4378 – Photovoltaic Systems | EE4680 – Photovoltaic Modelling | EE4670 – PV Materials Processing and Characterization |
| EE4585 – Semiconductor Device Physics | ET4379 – Photovoltaic Lab Course |
Meet the Faculty
Prof. dr.ir. Olindo Isabella
I come from a small town in the south of Italy. I hold an MSc degree in electronic engineering and a PhD degree in advanced optoelectronics. I studied in Naples in Italy for my MSc degree, but I carried out my PhD here at TU Delft. Then, as a foodie, otaku, and martial arts lover, I had great fun in Japan while working as a researcher at AIST in Tsukuba. After that, I started my academic career at TU Delft. First as an assistant professor, then an associate and finally a full professor in photovoltaic technologies and applications. In parallel to my academic job, I am married with two kids and practice aikido, running and (sometimes) tennis. Also, I love cooking and lego and I like reading tech blogs.
Currently, I am the head of the Photovoltaic Materials and Devices group, which is the largest Dutch university group fully focused on solar energy conversion. I am a principal investigator at Advanced Metropolitan Solution Institute in Amsterdam; I am responsible for the Solar Urban thematic area of Urban Energy Institute of TU Delft, and I am the director of the TU Delft PV Technology Centre. Research-wise, even though I am concerned about the whole photovoltaic value chain from materials, to cells, modules, and systems, I primarily work on crystalline silicon photovoltaic technology. Together with my team, we invent, model, fabricate and measure record efficiency solar cells and, lately, upscale them to large area substrates. These activities serve other research lines in the group on advanced multi-junction solar cells, photovoltatronics, XIPV systems, photovoltaic multi-scale modelling and circular photovoltaics.
Our vision in education is to offer a set of courses that educate young engineers needed for the societal demand for photovoltaics everywhere. Three of these courses are propaedeutic (PV Basics, PV Technologies, and PV Systems) and three are electives (PV Modelling, PV Laboratory, and PV Materials Processing and Characterization). Students can choose different combinations of these courses, perhaps with the addition of the Semiconductor Device Physics course, to develop a solid background knowledge to use in their MSc thesis projects. We recognize that the job market needs three types of engineers devoted to photovoltaics: the PV design engineer, the PV field engineer, and the PV process engineer. For this reason, our MSc thesis projects match the students’ background knowledge with their professional ambitions.
With photovoltaics rapidly growing into a multi-terawatt-year market by 2030, we need your passion, ingenuity, curiosity, and talent to mitigate and adapt to the incumbent climate changes.