GRECO - Generation Solar
Researchers believe that mobile can increase participation

The citizen science application Generation Solar developed under the GRECO - Fostering a New Generation of European Photovoltaic Society through Open Science project, is now available on the App Store.

A novelty that came to complement the web version and that may contribute to the increase in enrollments and participation of the international community in the photovoltaic sector, since the “use of computers for ‘leisure’ activities is not the most adequate and although the web app can be accessed in mobile phones is not really comfortable to”, defends Ana Belén Cristóbal, international coordinator of the GRECO project. “We think that the apps will facilitate the usability and the user experience”, adds the researcher at the Institute of Solar Energy at the Universidad Politécnica de Madrid (IES-UPM).

The Generation Solar app "allows research and citizens to be connected directly", reveals researcher Luís Fialho, from the Renewable Energies Chair of University of Évora, a Portuguese partner of the GRECO project. This bridge between science and broader audiences fulfills a dual function with these audiences. For Luís Fialho, the app responds in a fast, efficient and fun way to some questions from users and owners of photovoltaic installations: “The majority of citizens who have this type of technology are not specialists and are struggling with questions such as: Does it produce the energy it should? Is it operating correctly? Does that shadow on the photovoltaic panels cause problems? With this app you can find some answers and playfully participate in games in this context not normally associated with them.”

On the other hand, it fulfills a need felt by researchers, who need to “study ad-hoc solutions for grid management when distributed and intermittent energy is installed on a large scale and there is not a public database where we can access to get such data, ”adds Ana Belén Cristóbal. What is certain is that despite some enthusiasm for membership, particularly among the Portuguese community, the project is still far from the numbers needed to have an impact at the scientific level. According to Ana Belén Cristóbal, "we need to reach at least two or three thousand installations in order to be of real impact for researchers".

In the first phase, the GRECO project team also faced some problems with a bug in the app that blocked some users from joining, that has been solved. But the project coordinator does not hesitate to defend that, “anyway, as in the case of the web app we encourage any citizen using Solar Generation to contact us at this first stage in order to report any problem with the registration of new installations so that we can act quickly and solve any technical problem.”

GRECO is a multinational project, supported by the Horizon 2020 programme, of the European Commission, with grant nº 787289, with the participation of RE Chair, whose main objective is to promote the application of Open Science and Responsible Research and Innovation (RRI) to a research project in the photovoltaic sector.

Published in 27.05.2020