Technology and R&D

U.S. Energy Secretary Steven Chu has announced that the Department of Energy’s (DOE) Sandia National Laboratories is investing USD$8.5 million for four projects, which have reached Stage III of the Solar Energy Grid Integration Systems (SEGIS) program. DOE reported that these investments will be matched more than one-to-one by the SEGIS contractors to support more than USD$20 million in total projects.

imec has announced it will present several large-area silicon solar cells with a conversion efficiency above 19 percent at this year’s EU PVSEC, currently being held in Valencia, Spain.

In a second round of funding by the California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC), U.S.-based SunPower Corp. is set to receive a grant of around USD$1.8 million from the California Solar Initiative Research, Development, Deployment and Demonstration (CSI RD&D) Program.

By looking at how plants convert sunlight into stored energy, researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) have succeeded in mimicking a key aspect of the process in solar cells.

Swiss company, Oerlikon Solar, has launched a new production line ‘ThinFab’ for the manufacturing of thin film silicon modules at the EU PVSEC, which is says will achieve “record breaking” production costs of €0.50 per Watt peak (Wp).

The Fraunhofer Institute for Solar Energy Systems ISE in Freiburg, Germany has announced that operations have begun at its megawatt laboratory for photovoltaics (PV) inverters.

Three key states will account for 48 percent of the U.S.’s total photovoltaics (PV) market, according to a new report issued by EuPD Research. Aimed at helping the industry understand the downstream PV market, it added that Arizona “could evolve into one of the most important markets in the coming years”.

Researchers at the Intelligent Polymer Research Institute (IPRI) at the University of Wollongong in Australia have been awarded a new Australian Research Council (ARC) Linkage Grant of AUD$320,000 over three years. As such, they will work with Konarka Technologies in an effort to increase the efficiency of organic polymer solar cells.

Germany-based SMA Solar Technology AG has received certification from Underwriters Laboratories (UL) for its transformerless inverters. This, says the company, is a world first for transformerless inverters and means that it can distribute them in the U.S. market for the first time.

Research scientists from Boston University’s Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering have presented their findings on self-dusting solar panels to the 240th National Meeting of the American Chemical Society (ACS).