US DoE unveils up to USD 107m to spur solar technologies

The US Department of Energy (DoE) on Wednesday announced up to USD 107 million (EUR 97m) of funding to advance solar technologies under several programmes within its SunShot Initiative.

The department will fund 40 projects with a total of USD 42 million. This includes USD 17 million for 19 research and development (R&D) projects and USD 25 million for 21 projects under SunShot's Technology to Market programme. The R&D projects focus on both current and emerging photovoltaic (PV) technologies and will seek to improve power conversion efficiency and energy output, enhance service lifetime and decrease hardware costs. Technology to Market funding will support the development of new tools, technologies and services for the solar industry.

Later in 2016 the department plans to make up to USD 65 million in additional funding available under SunShot's PV Research and Development, Technology to Market and Systems Integration programmes.

DoE said the newly announced funding could bring the levelized cost of utility-scale solar electricity well below SunShot's target of USD 0.06 per kWh without incentives by 2020.

Sunnyvale, California-based Sunpreme received the largest award, of USD 5 million, under the Technology to Market programme. It will support the development of an advanced manufacturing toolset and process technology for low-cost copper metallization of high-efficiency heterojunction solar cells and glass-glass bifacial modules. Other awardees include Crystal Solar Inc of Santa Clara, California, which got USD 3 million and Suniva Inc of Norcross, Georgia which received USD 2 million.

A list of the awardees under that programme can be viewed here (http://energy.gov/eere/sunshot/technology-market-2-incubator-11-solarmat-4-t2m2).

(USD 1.0 = EUR 0.909)

Choose your newsletter by Renewables Now. Join for free!