Dr. BONNA NEWMAN

Head of Solar Products
Lightyear, NL

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​​​​​Bio​​​

With almost two decades of experience in research across the solar PV module value chain, including materials, cell modelling, novel substrates, light management, and cell-to-module process integration, most recently as portfolio manager for Circularity and Module Manufacturing Technologies at the Netherlands Organization for Applied Scientific Research (TNO), Bonna Newman, is Head of Solar Products at Lightyear, the Dutch startup developing solar electric vehicles. She has a PhD in atomic physics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and was the recipient of the Clare Boothe Luce Postdoctoral Fellowship. In 2021, she founded the Alliance for Solar Mobility (asom.solar), an industry alliance that represents more than 25 companies involved in the VIPV supply chain. She is also a member of the steering committee for the European Technology and Innovation Platform for PV (ETIP-PV) where she chairs the working group on Integrated PV Applications.

​Presentation ​​

Opportunities and Challenges for VIPV

Vehicle integrated PV is an emerging multi-GW PV global market where on-board PV delivers energy from the sun directly to electric vehicle power trains and auxiliary systems. While the concept has been around for more than 50 years, developments in the cost and availability of high performance and reliable solar technology combined with the growing EV market are ensuring that solar-powered vehicles will be a standard market offering by 2030. In this talk, I will share updates on the recent technical progress toward integrating PV into passenger car bodies, heavy transport and many other kinds of transportation options both safely and effectively. In addition, I will address the larger technical and regulatory framework that is developing to support these technologies and the role they will play in the Energy Transition.