A digital product passport would support the European PV sector’s circular practices by enhancing the tracking of material composition, recyclability, and suppliers, all of which are essential for material recovery.
The EU project “Retrieve project” scientists from the Bern University of Applied Sciences designed a digital product passport prototype to enable circular practices in the European PV market.
The PV platform will facilitate improved tracking of the PV value chain, thereby enabling enhanced end-of-life (EoL) management and circular economy functions.
Headlined in collaboration with nearly 70 experts, the DPP prototype is the solution to two of the European PV market’s greatest challenges today: the excessive reliance on non-European production sites and the growing accumulation of PV waste projects, which are projected to reach a volume of over 80 million tons by 2050.
The 16-partner, 10-country Horizon Europe project Retrieve is the high-end marketer of the EoL PV module material’s recyclability. While the project itself focuses on researching PV recycling technology, two of its activities aim to identify the value of digital technology in optimizing circular practices. However, the developmental work of the PV DPP had begun almost four years earlier in the Circusol project, where the earliest version of the prototype was developed.
Since then, the European PV market has undergone active evolution in response to shifting geopolitical and market conditions. The actions have revealed the primary challenges for market stakeholders, in addition to the opportunities and encouragements for using the DPP to capture value within the circular economy.
Data Collection
To define the most important aspect of the DPP, a survey of 70 solar experts was conducted by the research group at BUAS. Following the standard of the Product Circularity Datasheet (PCDS) (ISO 59040), the survey aimed to identify the most important categories of the DPP for the adoption of circular practices.
The members highlighted the need for the product’s composition, recyclability, and supplier labeling, as these metrics are essential for allowing transparency, ensuring regulatory compliance, and achieving high-quality, cost-reducing material recovery.
The survey was also supplemented with 15 in-depth stakeholder interviews from the up- (manufacturers), mid- (installers and service providers), and downstream PV value chain (EPR schemes and recyclers), including policy experts, that not only assisted in the technical building of the platform but also aided in the formulation of a sustainable business model concept.
The results of the survey and the interview directly informed the design of the DPP, and the latter, in turn, converts service and data requests identified in this way into a modular system architecture. The architecture invokes PV actors to gather key product and installation information, laying the groundwork for generating circular value and driving service innovation within the value chain.
For the manufacturers, the DPP enables product traceability, simplifies regulatory compliance, and enhances assessment of sustainability. The installer has access to the system’s historical and technical data, enabling performance monitoring, predictive maintenance, and other effective end-of-life management strategies. The recycler achieves early and accurate composition of the material, enabling them to scale up the recycling processes more effectively. Regulators can utilize the platform to track the extent of compliance by incorporating industry findings into the formulation and amendment of circular policies.
DPP Executions
The second phase of the platform rollout for the DPP involves harmonizing the project partner datasets for fine-tuning and testing the platform’s functionality. The project team at BUAS also proactively involves other value chain stakeholders in Europe in contributing data, use cases, and feedback, so that the DPP platform can meet the diverse set of application demands. Field pilot testing is envisioned as a means to evaluate performance and provide a number to value in different user segments and sites, all while placing special emphasis on demonstrating interoperability with existing digital infrastructures.
Data integrity and security are of the highest significance, with provisions in place to address data ownership, confidentiality, and access control. In the meantime, a sustainable business plan is being developed, and explorations are being initiated for longer-term value creation, stakeholder engagement, and platform governance following the pilot.
In the long term, the project aligns with the policy direction by harmonizing with the platform’s regulators within existing EU frameworks and seeking favorable upgrades that accelerate circular business models across the entire sector.
Assia Boukhatmi is also enrolled in the Berlin University of Technology and the Bern University of Applied Sciences for a Ph.D. Assia is also the holder of a master’s degree in industrial engineering, with a major in renewable energies, from the School of Economics and Law in Berlin, Germany, as well as the School of Technology of Applied Sciences. Her research focuses on the potential of digital technology to stimulate the European solar industry toward reshaping the circular economy. Stefan Grosser has been employed with the Bern University of Applied Sciences since 2011 and with the Department of Engineering and Computer Science since 2016. Stefan is the Divisional Dean of the Division of Industrial Engineering and Management Science. In addition, he is the chair of the research group “Strategy, Technology and Innovation Management”. Stefan is a Doctor of Business Administration of the University of St. Gallen, Switzerland. Stefan is involved in European and nationally funded research projects aimed at finding solutions to socio-technical problems in the energy sector and healthcare.
