LOWELL, Massachusetts, US, March 21, 2007.
The U.S. Department of Energy has selected 13 industry-led solar projects to receive US$168 million to “significantly reduce the cost of producing and distributing solar energy.”
“Solar technology can play a crucial role in moving toward affordable net zero energy homes and businesses which combine energy efficiency and renewable energy produced on-site,” says energy secretary Samuel Bodman. “Efficient buildings with solar power generation can help reduce peak demand and ease the need for expensive new generating capacity, transmission, and distributions lines as our economy grows.”
The funding is subject to appropriation from Congress and industry teams must contribute 50% of the funding for a total value of $357 million over three years. The agreements are yet to be negotiated and will be the first made as part of the Solar America Initiative of President George Bush, a component of his Advanced Energy Initiative announced in his State of the Union Address last year.
The selected teams have formed Technology Pathway Partnerships which include 50 companies, 14 universities, 3 non-profit organizations and 2 national laboratories to accelerate the drive towards commercialization of US-produced solar photovoltaic systems. DOE funding is expected to begin in FY07, with $51.6 million going to the TPPs.
The projects will expand annual U.S. manufacturing capacity of solar PV from 240 MW in 2005 to 2,850 MW by 2010. Such capacity would put the U.S. industry on track to reduce the cost of PV electricity from current levels of 18-23¢ per kWh to 5-10¢ per kWh by 2015.
Bodman made his announcement while visiting Konarka in Massachusetts, one of the selected solar energy project sponsors.
As an integral part of the AEI, the Solar America Initiative will reduce the cost of solar energy to make it competitive with conventional electricity sources in the U.S. by 2015. The SAI is part of the president’s goal to diversify energy resources through grants, incentives and tax credits, and will spur widespread commercialization and deployment of solar energy technologies to provide long-term economic, environmental and security benefits to the U.S.
Teams selected for negotiations under the SAI include: Amonix (to focus on manufacturing technology for high-concentrating PV and on low-cost production using multi-bandgap cells); Boeing (focus on cell fabrication research to yield very high efficiency systems); BP Solar (focus on reducing wafer thickness while improving yield of multi-crystalline silicon PV); Dow Chemical (develop integrated PV-powered technologies for roofing products); General Electric (develop various cell technologies including a new bifacial, high-efficiency silicon cell that could be incorporated into systems solutions); Greenray (design and develop a high-powered, ultra-high-efficiency solar module that contains an inverter); Konarka (focus on manufacturing research and product reliability assurance for extremely low-cost photovoltaic cells using organic dyes); Miasole (develop high-volume manufacturing technologies and PV component technologies); Nanosolar (work on improved low-cost systems and components using thin-film PV cells); Powerlight (focus on reducing non-cell costs by making innovations with automated design tools and with modules that include mounting hardware); Practical Instruments (explore a novel concept for low-profile high-concentration optics to increase the output of rooftop PV systems); SunPower (research lower-cost ingot and wafer fabrication technologies, automated manufacture of back-contact cells, and new module designs, to lower costs); and United Solar Ovonic (focus on increasing the efficiency and deposition rate of multi-bandgap, flexible, thin-film photovoltaic cells and reducing the cost of inverters and balance-of-system components).
The Energy Policy Act of 2005 provides incentives for the purchase of solar equipment, and could provide a credit equal to 30% of expenditures for commercial solar installations with no cap on the total credit. The EP Act also provides a 30% tax credit for PV property and solar water heating property used exclusively for purposes other than heating swimming pools and hot tubs.
