The US Department of Energy on Thursday announced $45 million in funding to increase production of solar parts to curb the country’s reliance on imports for the sector.
The grant covers the manufacturing of silicon components and dual-use photovoltaic (PV) incubators. The fund gets $18 million from the bipartisan Infrastructure Act, a component of the Biden administration’s so-called Investing in American program, which aims to accelerate the transition to clean energy, boost domestic manufacturing and create jobs. work
The grant will fund up to 12 projects “to help establish a network of manufacturers across the national solar supply chain focused on the production of polysilicon, silicon ingots and wafers, solar cells, glass and other module and equipment components manufacturing associates,” the DOE said. in a press release.
The funding also aims to “open new markets for emerging dual-use PV sectors, in particular agrovoltaics, building-integrated photovoltaics, floating photovoltaics and vehicle-integrated photovoltaics,” the department added.
“With these innovative American-made technologies, the Biden-Harris Administration is driving the transition to clean energy, lowering electricity costs for hard-working Americans and protecting our children’s future from the impacts of the crisis climate,” Energy Secretary Jennifer Jennifer. M Granholm said in the announcement.
Eighty-four percent of the photovoltaic modules used in the US are crystalline silicon while the remaining 16 percent are cadmium telluride, but the country had no active production of crystalline silicon ingot, wafer or cell. lí, according to a DOE report dated February 24, 2022.
“About 75 percent of the silicon solar cells incorporated into modules installed in the United States are made by Chinese subsidiaries located in just three countries in Southeast Asia: Vietnam, Malaysia and Thailand,” says the report
From 2018 to 2020, more than 85 percent of solar cells installed in the US came from abroad, according to a report by the US International Trade Commission on December 8, 2021.
The DOE has proposed sourcing the majority of cadmium telluride and crystalline silicon from domestic production, as described in a white paper it released in February.
“There have been 63 domestic manufacturing announcements across the solar supply chain since the start of the Biden-Harris Administration [2021]including more than 40 of which have been announced since August 2022, the DOE said in Thursday’s announcement.
On April 20, the department announced $82 million in grants for research and innovation projects aimed at integrating solar power into the grid. The largest allocations have gone to two universities at $9 million each. The Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the University of Colorado Boulder will lead two separate teams of academic and industry experts to develop solar cells that combine silicon and perovskite photovoltaic materials.
The solar projects are also part of more than $21 million in funding that the DOE announced on June 22 for the development of technologies and innovations that support the commercial-scale deployment of clean energy.
With this grant, DOE is supporting Sandia National Laboratories to develop a microgrid product for agrovoltaics, or the production of crops and solar energy on the same land.
The National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) has three projects selected for this funding. One of them aims to increase the conversion efficiency limit of cadmium telluride cells by using negative cracked film lithography. Another is for the commercialization of the Reflected Target Non-Intrusive Assessment, a new optical measurement for concentrating solar power (CSP) mirrors. The lab will also “further commercialize drone-based non-intrusive optical (NIO) technology for efficient and automated optical characterization of heliostats in CSP,” the department said.
On June 12, the DOE opened applications for a $4 million award to spur innovation in solar software and hardware technologies.
“Hardware innovations should be able to be manufactured in the United States. Software innovations should help address the non-hardware costs of solar, such as customer acquisition, financing and integration of the network,” he said of the contest.
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