Asian Photovoltaic Industry Association (APVIA) 3rd General Meeting of the 4th Council, which is also the annual general meeting has been successfully held in Shaw Foundation Alumni House, National University of Singapore on Nov.1, 2019. This meeting has seen representatives of APVIA Steering Committee and Executive Committee from China, Australia, Singapore, Malaysia, Philippines, etc. APVIA usually holds two general meetings every year, one is concurrently held during SNEC Photovoltaic and Smart Energy Conference and Exhibition, and the other is held in November during Asia Clean Energy Summit (ACES) and Singapore International Energy Week(SIEW).

Chaired by Prof. Sulaiman Shaari, Sec-General of APVIA, the meeting starts its formal part at 9:00am with Prof. Sulaiman’s opening remarks. Mdm. Yue Mi, Executive Vice chairman of APVIA, then also delivers welcome message, expressing her thanks to director members for attending this meeting and supporting APVIA.

At this meeting, led by Prof Sulaiman, director members have by turn reviewed and approved last meeting minutes, annual report and the audited financial report. Prof Sulaiman has put pointed in annual report that APVIA members are most manufactures, lacking other types of companies members like EPC, Utility Corporations, Financial Institutes, which should be our new aims for future member recruitment.

“APVIA should focus on build one-on-one communications through some seminars and do more direct communication with companies and potential members”, he says.

Another noted point he made is that it is important for APVIA reports to be summarized and normalized, which he says is not an easy but worthwhile task. These points have earned unanimously agreement among the attendees.

When reviewing the yearly financial statistics, Mdm Mi is very glad to tell everyone that this year APVIA has seen a great progress in financial statistics, with yearly net profit rising from deficit to almost 80,000 dollars profit due to a series of efforts made in the past one year, such as cutting the labor cost and increasing the members.

“In the future, we hopefully continue to make 150,000 dollars annually in order to support its rapid development”, she says.

After the formal part, Mrs. Techi Capellan, Chairman, Philippine Solar and Storage Energy Alliance(PSSEA) put forward a proposal in this meeting on Creating Floating Solar Committee, in view that floating solar is now emerging and developing rapidly in Southeast Asia and even very popular in the world. Mr Steve Blume, the Chairman of APVIA steering committee, have then made a short speech, giving his recognition on what have been done in the past year by APVIA working team. And Prof Armin Arberle, the Chairman of academic committee have then briefly introduce the research progress in solar industry on the future hot topics such as Poly- Si/Sio, Perovskite, etc.

Afterwards, as a usual agenda, Industry associations’ delegates have each given the market status update in Singapore, Australia, and Malaysia.

The reports are then followed by a heated discussion on APVIA Yearly Event Plan and APVIA Website. The website has been long recognized as full of ineffective, irrelevant information and not user-friendly, which after many proposals and suggestions from core team members has now come to improvement progress.

At last, the meeting closes successfully with agreement that everyone meet in Shanghai next year at SNEC 2020, when APVIA’s next general meeting will take place.