Abstract
Next generation concentrating photovoltaic technologies could have a large-scale impact on world electricity production once they will become economically attractive and grid parity will be reached. To proceed towards this important goal, a new large integrated project, APOLLON, has started in July 2008, within the frame of the 7th European Framework program, having the main objective of substantial decrease the Concentrating Photovoltaic (CPV) technology cost to a target value of 2 Euro/W. This ambitious objective is targeted to be reached after five years of research and technological activities in which, both "point focus" and "dense array" CPV technologies will be implemented by facing all the technology-critical issues related to each component of the CPV systems. With this contribution we report the principal results obtained during the first year of the project regarding Multi-Junction (MJ) solar cells, concentrator optics, assembling, tracking and testing. ©2009 IEEE.