$50M Towards Domestic Solar Manufacturing

Department of Energy to Invest $50 Million to Advance Domestic Solar Manufacturing Market, Achieve SunShot Goal

SUNPATH Program Will Boost American Competitiveness, Lower Cost of Solar Energy

August 02, 2011

U.S. Energy Secretary Steven Chu today announced a $50 million investment over two years for the SUNPATH program, aimed to help the nation reclaim its competitive edge in solar manufacturing. SUNPATH, which stands for Scaling Up Nascent PV At Home, represents the second solar Photovoltaic Manufacturing Initiative (PVMI) supporting the Department of Energy's SunShot Initiative.

"This investment provides a necessary boost to domestic solar manufacturing businesses, encouraging them to keep jobs here and establish America's leadership in the world's growing clean energy economy," said Secretary Chu. "In addition to invigorating clean energy manufacturing, this program will help achieve the SunShot goal of making unsubsidized utility-scale solar cost-competitive with other forms of energy by the end of the decade."

As recently as 1995, the United States maintained a dominant global solar market share, manufacturing 43% of the world's PV panels. In steady decline, U.S. market share shrank to 27% by 2000 and to 7% by 2010. SUNPATH will help return the United States to the forefront, driving innovation and assuring continued leadership in the 21st century clean energy economy.

PVMI Part II: SUNPATH seeks to increase domestic manufacturing through investments that have sustainable, competitive cost and performance advantages. SUNPATH will help companies with pilot-scale commercial production scale up their manufacturing capabilities, enabling them to overcome a funding gap that often curtails domestic business at a critical stage. By bridging this gap, SUNPATH will help ensure that innovative, low-cost solar technologies are manufactured in the United States.

The PV Manufacturing Initiative accelerates the cost reduction and commercialization of solar technologies by coordinating solutions across industry. The initiative will help create a robust, domestic PV manufacturing base and develop a workforce with the critical skills required to deliver reliable, affordable, clean energy.

PVMI Part I: Advanced Manufacturing Partnerships has resulted in the selection of $110 million in projects to three industry and academic consortia to enable substantial cost reductions in PV module production. To ensure that these technologies are manufactured domestically, PVMI Part II: SUNPATH will support an initial ramp up to high volume manufacturing. DOE's national laboratories are stepping up their validation facilities to ensure that the technologies developed and manufactured in Parts I and II are tested at scale in multiple locations and climates in the United States.

The Department of Energy is seeking applicants with industrial-scale demonstrations of PV modules, cells, or substrates that offer lower-cost solutions in line with the SunShot goal. Applications are due by October 28, 2011. More information and application requirements can be found at the Funding Opportunity Exchange (FOA number DE-FOA-0000566).

For more information on the SunShot Initiative, visit energy.gov/sunshot.
DOE's Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy invests in clean energy technologies that strengthen the economy, protect the environment, and reduce dependence on foreign oil.

 

 

DOE & New Solar Tech

June 17, 2011

DOE Offers $150 Million Conditional Commitment for a Loan Guarantee to Support Breakthrough Solar Manufacturing Process

Transformational Technology Could Cut Production Costs of Silicon Wafers in Half

Washington D.C. - U.S. Energy Secretary Steven Chu today announced the offer of a conditional commitment for a $150 million loan guarantee to 1366 Technologies, Inc. for the development of a multicrystalline wafer manufacturing project.  The project will be capable of producing approximately 700 to 1,000 megawatts (MW) of silicon-based wafers annually using a revolutionary manufacturing process called Direct Wafer.  The innovative process could reduce manufacturing costs of the wafers by approximately 50 percent, dramatically cutting the cost of solar power.  Phase 1 of the project will be located in Lexington, Massachusetts and is expected to generate 70 permanent jobs and 50 construction jobs.  The company is evaluating site locations for another planned phase, which they anticipate will create hundreds of additional jobs.

"This project is a game-changer that could dramatically lower the cost of photovoltaic solar cells.  It is exactly the kind of innovation that puts America at the forefront of the global clean energy race," said Secretary Chu.  "As global demand for solar cells increases, this kind of technology will help the U.S. increase its market share and be more competitive with other countries such as China, which currently accounts for 60 percent of the world supply of multicrystalline wafers."

The original development of the company's Direct Wafering technology was supported with a $4 million grant from DOE's Advanced Research Projects Agency - Energy program and a $3 million grant from DOE's Solar Energy Technology Program.  The innovative manufacturing process condenses four manufacturing steps into a single, low cost step and greatly reduces silicon waste by forming individual wafers directly from a pool of molten silicon.  A thin sheet of silicon freezes inside the Direct Wafer furnace and is then removed and laser-trimmed to size.  At full production, the entire wafer formation process is completed in just a fraction of the time relative to conventional batch processing which can take up to three days.  The company's revolutionary one-step process requires ninety percent less energy and results in an industry-standard product that can be used by any standard multicrystalline cell manufacturer.

The Department of Energy's Loan Programs Office administers three separate programs:  the Title XVII Section 1703 and Section 1705 loan guarantee programs, and the Advanced Technology Vehicle Manufacturing (ATVM) loan program.   The loan guarantee programs support the deployment of commercial technologies along with innovative technologies that avoid, reduce, or sequester greenhouse gas emissions, while ATVM supports the development of advanced vehicle technologies.  Under all three programs, DOE has issued loans, loan guarantees or offered conditional commitments for loan guarantees totaling over $33 billion to support 35 clean energy projects across the U.S.  DOE has also issued conditional commitments or loan guarantees to support numerous other projects, including four of the world's largest solar generation facilities, two geothermal projects, the world's largest wind farm and the nation's first new nuclear power plant in three decades.  For more information, please visit the Loan Programs Office.

SunShot Initiative

DOE Pursues SunShot Initiative to Achieve 

Cost Competitive Solar Energy by 2020

Announces $27 Million in Projects to Advance Solar Development and Manufacturing

February 4, 2011

Washington, D.C. - U.S. Energy Secretary Steven Chu today announced additional details of the Department of Energy's "SunShot" initiative to reduce the total costs of photovoltaic solar energy systems by about 75 percent so that they are cost competitive at large scale with other forms of energy without subsidies before the end of the decade. By reducing the cost for utility scale installations by about 75 percent to roughly $1 a watt - which would correspond to roughly 6 cents per kilowatt-hour - solar energy systems could be broadly deployed across the country.

This will increase American economic competitiveness and help the U.S. regain leadership in the global market for solar photovoltaics. As part of the SunShot initiative, Secretary Chu announced today that the Department of Energy is awarding $27 million in projects to support the development, commercialization, and manufacturing of advanced solar energy technologies.

"America is in a world race to produce cost-effective, quality photovoltaics. The SunShot initiative will spur American innovations to reduce the costs of solar energy and re-establish U.S. global leadership in this growing industry," said Secretary Chu. "These efforts will boost our economic competitiveness, rebuild our manufacturing industry and help reach the President's goal of doubling our clean energy in the next 25 years."

The SunShot program builds on the legacy of President Kennedy's 1960s "moon shot" goal, which laid out a plan to regain the country's lead in the space race and land a man on the moon. The program will aggressively drive innovations in the ways that solar systems are conceived, designed, manufactured and installed.

In addition to investing in improvements in cell technologies and manufacturing, the SunShot initiative will also focus on steps to streamline and digitize local permitting processes that will reduce installation and permitting costs. To achieve the SunShot goal of reducing the total installed cost of large scale solar electricity by about 75 percent, DOE will be working closely with partners in government, industry, research laboratories and academic institutions across the country.
SunShot will work to bring down the full cost of solar - including the costs of the solar cells and installation - by focusing on four main pillars:

• Technologies for solar cells and arrays that convert sunlight to energy;
• Electronics that optimize the performance of the installation;
• Improvements in the efficiency of solar manufacturing processes;
• Installation, design and permitting for solar energy systems.

For more information and to follow the initiative's progress, visit the SunShot Initiative webpage.
As part of the launch of the SunShot initiative, DOE is also announcing $27 million in awards to nine new projects. This funding includes support for five projects that are receiving $20 million to further develop U.S. supply chains for PV manufacturing. This includes support for companies across the solar energy supply chain, including U.S. material and tool suppliers and companies that are developing technologies that can be adopted directly into current manufacturing processes. For more information and a list of awardees, read the $20 million investment excerpt from the EERE Network newsletter.

Additionally, DOE's National Renewable Energy Laboratory is investing $7 million to fund the latest round of the successful PV Incubator program, which helps to shorten the commercialization timeline for promising emerging solar technologies. The companies work closely with DOE national laboratories to scale their technologies and manufacturing processes and move the products from pre-commercial and prototype stage to pilot and full-scale manufacturing operations. For more information and a list of awardees, read the $7 million investment excerpt from the EERE Network newsletter.

The SunShot initiative builds on the Department's significant research and development (R&D) efforts in solar energy over the past decade, conducted in partnership with American universities, national laboratories and the private sector. In the last ten years, DOE has invested more than $1 billion in solar energy research that has 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 percent since 1995, and have yielded a number of critical breakthroughs in solar PV performance and cost. Read the fact sheet (PDF - 26kb) detailing some of the Department's past and current work in solar energy.

'Buy American' Law

Pentagon required to buy only American-made solar panels.

On January 9, 2011, the New York Times reported that new legislation signed into law by the president requires the Department of Defense to buy only American-made solar panels.

In essence, the new 'Buy American' provision within the military authorization legislation is the first step towards transitioning the Pentagon away from purchasing Chinese-made solar modules. As the wars in remote desert regions continue, the military is investing more and more in practical solutions to bringing electricity to the troops. The move towards U.S. made modules should have a distinct impact on the U.S. solar industry, though the numbers are not clear at this point. As the Times reported:

China has emerged as the world’s dominant producer of solar panels in the last two years. It accounted for at least half the world’s production last year, and its market share is rising rapidly. The United States accounts for $1.6 billion of the world’s $29 billion market for solar panels; market analyses typically have not broken out military sales separately.

Representative Maurice Hinchey, Democrat (NY), a staunch supporter of the 'Buy American 'provision included in the bill is quoted as saying:

“We’ve had a lot of money taken out of this country and invested in other places around the world, particularly China, and particularly in alternative energies. For them to be producing alternative energy, that’s great, but we need to do it ourselves, and as much of it as possible."

To read the original article, click here.