Abstract
Several attempts aiming to improve PV quality and reliability have emerged in recent years. Nonetheless, such initiatives do not comprehensively make an impression on the entire global value chain, nor highlight the technological achievements made by state-of-the-art PV plants. In that respect, this paper offers to capitalize on the network of experts participating to SOLARUNITED working group. This group combines the strength of all parts of the value chain, globally, with a core of actors coming from the technology side of the PV industry: equipment manufacturers, materials, components providers, cells, modules, and inverters manufacturers. This initiative intends to link the different sectors of the PV value chain, to bring it one-step forward in terms of quality and reliability and to ensure it is achievable anywhere. The upstream part of the PV value chain intends to play a major role in the improvement of the quality of PV components and installations: through new and improved production processes, the industry will contribute to increase the durability and reliability of PV systems.