In February 2020, a workshop with nearly forty participants took place in Mexico City which brought national supporters of both solar thermal and photovoltaic power plants as well as bank representatives together with Mexico’s quality infrastructure (QI) experts.
Participants oft he workshop © Miriam Haller, 2020
The meeting was organized by PTB and was based on the project ‘Strengthening the Quality Infrastructure for Renewable Energy and Energy Efficiency in Mexico’, which particularly deals with supporting the solar energy sector.
Representatives of five support programmes for solar thermal and/or photovoltaic power plants presented their work contents in a well-founded way.
The five programmes include:
The representatives reported on their experience gained by applying their own support requirements which are often based on standards and technical regulations.
Dr. Ing. Clemens Sanetra, PTB expert © Miriam Haller, 2020
In the following, PTB expert Dr. Ing. Clemens Sanetra summarized the most important items of all solar support programme presentations and underlined how important it is to integrate Mexican quality infrastructure institutions in the processes.
One result of the workshop was that the relevant, simultaneously verifiable criteria must be harmonized. Only in this way, reliable and effective mechanisms can be found – first during the phase of application and later on during the installation of the power plant – in order to ensure good quality.
Mahdha Flores Campos, PTB Expert © private, 2020
In the following weeks, PTB expert Mahdha Flores Campos will address the programme representatives to find out how the Mexican quality infrastructure (QI) institutions can provide support. For this purpose, a scope of action was elaborated which will be the basis for the follow-up programme.
Staff members of the Mexican QI institutions* as well as representatives in the field of solar thermal and photovoltaic power of the Instituto de Energías Renovables de la Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México presented their knowledge in the afternoon and answered questions from the audience.
The participants then discussed the topics of “homogenization of criteria”, “ensuring implementation” as well as “further activities”.
As a consequence of the discussion, a team was launched which is headed by Mahdha Flores Campos and will deal with the triggered subjects in greater detail. Here, the target is to coordinate the roles and possibilities of quality infrastructure for the solar sector and present them accordingly to the users, in particular the support programmes.
We hope that this will help people to put more trust in technologies. Investment stimuli could be triggered, and a sustainable development in the energy sector could be supported.
Dr. Wolfang Schmid, Project coordinator © PTB/Fotografie, 2020
Dr. Wolfang Schmid, who himself has been a staff member at CENAM for many years and has been head of the EURAMET secretariat until recently, will succeed Susanne Wendt as project coordinator. He also used the opportunity to introduce himself.
What’s next? Every two years, a metrology symposium takes place in Mexico. This October, the topic in Querétaro will be “Digital Metrology in Quality Infrastructure and Industry 4.0”. Naturally, the staff members of the respective institutions will be most welcome. PTB expects that this second meeting will create even more synergies!
*
CENAM – Centro Nacional de Metrología – The National Metrology Institute of Mexico
ema – Entidad Mexicana de Acreditacion https://www.ema.org.mx/portal_v3/ Mexican Accreditation Body
ANCE – Asociación de Normalización y Certificación https://www.ance.org.mx/ Association for Normalization and Certification
NORMEX – Sociedad Mexicana de Normalización Certificación – Mexican Society of Normalization and Certification
ONNCCE – Organismo Nacional de Normalización y Certificación de la Construccion y Edificación National Organism for Normalization and Certification of Edification and Construction
This blog post was written by Miriam Haller and Wolfgang Schmid. Miriam Haller participates in the Development Cooperation (DC) trainee programme, a young professionals’ trainee programme of the Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ) implemented by GIZ (German Society for International Cooperation). Ms Haller completed a part of this programme in the above-mentioned project. PTB sincerely thanks Ms Haller for her support and for making this text available!
Titelbild © iStock, 2020
