
Energy Dept – $46.2M for 48 Projects to Advance Solar Power Technologies - diafygi
https://energy.gov/articles/energy-department-announces-462-million-48-projects-advance-solar-power-technologies
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philipkglass
Some favorites:

\- "Two-Dimensional Material Based Layer Transfer for Low-Cost, High-
Throughput, High-Efficiency Solar Cells" \-- could finally make gallium
arsenide thin film cells cheap. (Alta Devices thought it had solved this, but
didn't and pivoted toward cost-insensitive customers. Worth another try.)

\- "Fault Tolerant, Shade Tolerant High Voltage PV Modules" \-- could produce
silicon-based modules that are more durable and perform better under non-ideal
conditions. Doesn't require drastic technology changes but could bring
modules' average annual energy yield closer to the ideal.

\- "Isovalent Alloying and Heterovalent Substitution for Super-efficient
Halide Perovskite PV Solar Cells", "Low-Cost Scaffold-Reinforced Perovskite
Solar Modules with Integrated Light Management", "Perovskite on Silicon Tandem
Solar Cells" \-- perovskite materials have the potential to be the first new
commercially viable thin-film solar material in 20 years. If tandems with
crystalline silicon can be commercialized they could beat the 1-junction
Shockley–Queisser efficiency limit and become the _first ever_ multi-junction
cells cheap enough for terrestrial use.

\- "Direct Metallization with Reactive Inks – Assessment of Reliability and
Process Sensitivities", "Electroplated Aluminum - An Alternative to Copper or
Silver Electrode in Silicon Solar Cells" \-- both projects aim to
reduce/replace use of silver for cell contacts. Silver is the only material-
scarcity bottleneck at present for scaling silicon PV up to the terawatt-per-
year manufacturing level.

And a few (IMO) poor choices: SolarReserve, Echogen Power Systems, and Solar
Dynamics will develop new concentrating systems and new thermal energy storage
materials for concentrating solar thermal technology. Give up already on this
dead end. Compared to PV, solar thermal costs more, has higher mechanical
complexity, works in fewer locations, consumes more water, and needs more land
per unit of energy delivered. The one theoretical advantage over PV -- after-
dark power via thermal energy storage -- is rapidly being erased by source-
agnostic electricity storage.

