Date: Nov 29, 2012 Source: (
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On November 28, eight solar research effort
s were announced among 66 projects receiving funding
through the Energy Department's Advanced Research
Projects Agency -- Energy
(ARPA-E) "OPEN 2012"
program. These eight projects are part of a $130
million investment in cutting-edge research
encompassing 11 technology areas in 24 states. The
OPEN 2012 projects represent transformational
technologies that show fundamental technical promise
but are too early for private-sector investment.
Led by teams from universities, indus
try, and national labs, the following
projects were selected to receive
a total of more than $14 million to focus on solar energy breakthroughs:
California Instit
ute of Technology
(Pasadena, California): $2,400,000 to develop an optical device
that focuses and splits sunlight into individual colo
r bands to improve the effici
ency of solar electricity
generation. Once light is separated into colors, Ca
lTech's tailored solar cells match each separated
color band to dramatically improve the over
all efficiency of solar energy conversion.
•
Georgia Institute of Technology
(Atlanta, Georgia):
$3,600,000 to develop a high-efficiency solar
reactor to produce solar fuel. Using liquid metal,
the reactor transports heat away from the sunlight-
collection point to a chemical reaction zone, mi
nimizing the loss of sola
r heat. This system would
enable cost-effective solar fuels that can be used
for transportation and continuous electric power
generation.
•
Glint Photonics, Inc.
(Menlo Park, California): $523,172 to develop a solar concentrator that can
capture the full amount of avail
able sunlight regardless of the
sun's position. Unlike today's
technology, this concentrator does not require comp
lex moving parts to track the sun's movements.
Glint's inexpensive design uses an automatic optical syst
em of fluid layers that
adjust their positions
in response to solar heat.
•
MicroLink Devices
(Niles, Illinois): $3,316,705
to develop high-efficiency solar cells to capture
concentrated sunlight with a unique
blend of crystal layers in an innov
ative design. These cells will
improve concentrated photovoltaic products to in
crease the amount of energy generated from solar
power plants. MicroLink
will use sophisticated manufacturing
techniques to allow for reuse of
expensive growth templates to minimize costs no
rmally associated with high-performance solar cells.
•
National Renewable Energy Laboratory
(Golden, Colorado): $890,000 to develop a solar thermal
electric generator to directly convert heat from
concentrated sunlight to electricity using a new
generation of thermoelectric materi
als that can operate at higher te
mperatures and efficiencies. The
new materials and advanced engineering designs could conv
ert solar heat to electricity at three times
the efficiency of current systems.
•
National Renewable Energy Laboratory
(Golden, Colorado): $800,000 to develop a new approach
to enhance the efficiency of low-cost plastic solar
cells using specially engineered photonic structures
to capture a larger part of the solar spectrum. NR
EL's approach could triple
the efficiency of plastic
photovoltaics, enabling the adoption of this low-
cost, clean, and renewable electricity source.
•
Otherlab, Inc.
(San Francisco, California): $1,600,000 to develop an inexpensive method to reflect
sunlight onto a solar tower using small mirrors. Many
of today's mirrors are 20 to 30 feet tall, making
them difficult to stabilize and rotate. Otherlab's hy
draulic drivers, made with
low-cost plastic parts,
precisely position smaller energy-c
ollecting mirrors to dramatic
ally lower solar field costs.
•
University of California Santa Cruz
(Santa Cruz, California): $1,624,030 to develop an innovative
optical device for harvesting concentrated sunlight in
to optical fibers, solar
cells, and thermal storage
devices, which maximizes use of the solar spec
trum. The optical device uses unique thin-film
materials and structures to transfer and transfo
rm concentrated sunlight with minimum losses
compared to traditional light-concentrating optics
