Originally published on Solar Love. US Energy Secretary Ernest Moniz this week announced $30 million of support for 12 more unique, hybrid solar projects through the ARPA-E program. Actually, it’s through a program within that program — the Full-Spectrum Optimized Conversion and Utilization of Sunlight (FOCUS) program, “which is aimed at developing new … [continued]
This article first appeared on Solar Love. The general drive in the solar energy technology industry has been towards the development of higher solar cell efficiencies and lowered manufacturing costs, but are there other avenues of improvement worth exploring? Such as the development of ultra-thin, ultra-lightweight solar cells? That’s exactly … [continued]
Researchers at the University of Michigan have come up with a low-cost way to manufacture high-grade silicon, based on a concept familiar to anyone who has tried to make rock candy at home. If the breakthrough can be translated into a commercially viable process, it would make ultra-cheap solar tech … [continued]
MIT student Miles Barr was just announced as one of the Lemelson-MIT Student Prize winners for an innovative solar technology ‘breakthrough’. Barr was awarded $30,000, as were two other award-winning students (from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute). Barr actually just finished his PhD in chemical engineering from … [continued]
A lab at MIT, led by Dr. Daniel Nocera, have invented a new and novel form of storing energy that may prove to be an important milestone in the development of alternative energy. In fact, the obvious utility of the process has engendered a bit of excitement, but this excitement has also generated some misconceptions about the process that I would like to clear up, now that I have a more complete understanding of how it works.
