On February 4^th, 2011 U.S. Energy Secretary Steven Chu announced that the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) will award USD$27 million to nine projects to support the development, commercialization and manufacturing of advanced solar photovoltaic (PV) technologies. The funding includes USD$20.3 million for supply chain improvements and is part of the DOE's "SunShot" initiative, which aims to bring down the costs of PV systems by 75% by 2020, to reach approximately USD$1/watt.

"America is in a world race to produce cost-effective, quality photovoltaics," said DOE Secretary Chu. "The SunShot initiative will spur American innovations to reduce the costs of solar energy and re-establish U.S. global leadership in this growing industry."

"These efforts will boost our economic competitiveness, rebuild our manufacturing industry and help reach the President's goal of doubling our clean energy in the next 25 years."

Awards recipients include 3M, Varian, Veeco

The USD$27 million includes USD$20.3 million in support for five projects which involve innovations to strengthen the U.S. solar manufacturing industry. Projects supported including multiple aspects of the PV supply chain, from wafer to backsheet production, as well as the development of PV production equipment for lower-cost thin-film PV cells.

Through this portion of the program, the DOE has awarded USD$3 million to 1366 Technologies Inc. (Lexington, Massachusetts, U.S.), USD$4.4 million to 3M Company (St. Paul, Minnesota, U.S.), USD$3.1 million to PPG Industries Inc. (Cheswick, Pennsylvania, U.S.), USD$4.8 million to Varian Semiconductor Equipment Associates Inc. (Gloucester, Massachusetts, U.S.) and USD$4.8 million to Veeco Instruments Inc. (Lowell, Massachusetts, U.S.).

NREL to invest USD$7 million in PV incubator program

Additionally, the U.S. DOE's National Renewable Energy Laboratories (Golden, Colorado, U.S.) will invest USD$7 million to fund a fourth round of its PV incubator program, with the goal of shortening the commercialization time for emerging solar technologies.

The companies chosen to participate in this latest round of the PV Incubator Program are Crystal Solar Inc. (Santa Clara, California, U.S.), Caelux (Pasadena, California, U.S.), Solexant Corporation (San Jose, California, U.S.) and Stion Corporation (San Jose, California, U.S.).

SunShot a reference to 1960's space race

The SunShot program will focus on four main areas, including increasing the efficiencies of PV cells, electronics that optimize the performance of PV installations, improvements in the efficiency of PV manufacturing processes and installation, design and permitting for PV systems.

The DOE states that the "SunShot" name is a reference to President Kennedy's 1960's "moon shot" goal which laid out a plant to surpass the Soviet Union's space program and land a man on the moon.

2011-02-07| Courtesy: U.S. Department of Energy | solarserver.com © Heindl Server GmbH

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