SunShot will work to bring down the full cost of solar, including solar cells and installation, by focusing on four areas: technologies for solar cells and arrays; electronics that optimize installation performance; manufacturing process improvements; and improvements in installation, design, and permitting.
The initiative builds on DOE's R&D efforts in solar over the past decade, conducted in partnership with American universities, national labs, and the private sector. Over the last 10 years, DOE invested over $1 billion in solar research that's been leveraged with significant private industry funding to support more than $2 billion in total solar R&D projects.
This includes investments by DOE's Office of Science, Solar Energy Technologies Program, and ARPA-E, the Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy. Innovations in both science and technology have driven the cost of solar down 60% since 1995, and have yielded a number of critical breakthroughs in solar PV performance and cost. See the DOE press release, the SunShot Initiative Web page, and the fact sheet on DOE investments in solar energy.
DOE Invests $27 Million in Solar Manufacturing, Advanced PV
As part of the SunShot initiative, DOE will invest up to $20.3 million to strengthen the U.S. solar manufacturing industry, improve manufacturing efficiencies, and reduce costs.
DOE's Solar Energy Technologies Program will offer support to companies across the supply chain, including U.S. material and tool suppliers and companies developing technologies that can be dropped into current manufacturing processes.
Award recipients are pursuing projects that focus on technology improvements that will lead to improved solar cell efficiency, reduced production costs, and a stronger domestic PV industry.
Awardees include:
- 1366 Technologies (Lexington, MA): $3 million to further develop a "Direct Wafer" manufacturing process that dramatically reduces the cost of producing silicon wafers for use in silicon PV modules;
- 3M (St. Paul, MN): $4.4 million to develop and commercialize a flexible, highly transparent "topsheet" that will enable successful commercialization of flexible PV modules;
- PPG Industries (Cheswick, PA): $3.1 million to develop materials, coating designs, and manufacturing processes to commercialize glass for the cadmium telluride (CdTe) module manufacturing industry;
- Varian Semiconductor (Gloucester, MA): $4.8 million to bring down manufacturing costs of "interdigitated" back contact cells, the most efficient silicon solar cells on the market;
- Veeco (Lowell, MA): $4.8 million to accelerate R&D, integration, and commercialization of an innovative thin-film CIGS (copper, indium, gallium, diselenide) multi-stage thermal deposition production system to manufacture cost-efficient CIGS PV solar cells.
See the DOE press release and the Solar Energy Technologies Program website and the SunShot Initiative website.
DOE also announced $7 million in funding for the fourth round of the Photovoltaic Incubator Program. The program helps to develop and commercialize promising emerging solar technologies by shortening the timeline from pre-commercial and prototype stage PV technologies to pilot and full-scale manufacturing operations. It enhances the commercial potential of new manufacturing processes and products that can realize dramatic cost reductions.
DOE's National Renewable Energy Lab issued the funds to:
- Caelux (Pasadena, CA) to develop a flexible solar cell manufacturing process and design that minimizes the amount of semiconducting material used.
- Solexant (San Jose, CA) for a new thin-film material from substances that are non-toxic and not rare.
- Stion (San Jose, CA) for a thin-film technology that allows two high-efficiency thin-film solar devices to be stacked, allowing for much better absorption of light, as well as improved power generation.
- Crystal Solar (Santa Clara, CA) for a new technology for the fabrication, handling, processing, and packaging of very thin single crystal silicon wafers (four times thinner than standard cells) that eliminate many wasteful, expensive wafer-processing steps.
See the
DOE press release.
