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Building on an Obama administration initiative, the US
Department of Energy 25 March set a goal of cutting the cost of
solar energy by 60% within the next 10 years through a research and
development program that will provide nearly $128 million to
advance new technologies, including perovskite-based thin-film
modules, which are seen by researchers as one of the most promising
innovations in the field.
DOE also is following Trump administration efforts to improve
the economics of concentrating solar plants (CSP), which
concentrate solar heat to create steam that drives power-generating
turbines.
While initial utility-scale CSP plants were built through DOE
cost-sharing during the Obama administration, CSP plants in recent
years have been unable to keep up with cost reductions in
photovoltaic solar. The agency now will provide $58 million for
technology improvements—including long-duration molten-salt
energy storage—and a next-generation CSP plant.
DOE also will provide $20 million for its National Renewable
Energy Laboratory (NREL) to set up a consortium to develop cheaper
cadmium telluride thin-film solar modules, a technology that
already has made First Solar the leading US solar manufacturer due
to its low cost.
The Biden administration initiative follows the path laid by the
Obama administration's successful SunShot program, which was
launched in 2011 as a program to slash the unsubsidized levelized
cost of energy (LCOE) of utility-scale solar PV by 2020. That
program met its initial target of 6 cents/kWh in 2017, at which
point DOE set a new LCOE target of 3 cents/kWh by 2030.
But with solar's LCOE now at about 4.6 cents/kWh, DOE said a
more ambitious target was needed to meet the Biden
administration's ambitious goal of a 100% clean electricity grid
by 2035.
"To reach that goal in the next 15 years, the country will need
to add hundreds of gigawatts of solar energy to the grid at a pace
as much as five times faster than current installation rates," DOE
said in a statement. "To that end, DOE is accelerating its
utility-scale solar 2030 cost target by five years—setting a
new goal of driving down the current cost of 4.6 cents/kWh to 3
cents/kWh by 2025 and 2 cents/kWh by 2030."
Perovskite backing
The latest DOE initiative provides $40 million for 22 projects
proposed by American universities, energy laboratories, and solar
companies to advance perovskite-based solar, which experts say is
the most promising technology for cutting PV costs. A mineral
first discovered in Russia and since then commonly found across
the globe, perovskite is far cheaper than silicon, the primary
element used in solar cells and modules.
DOE already has invested significantly in improving perovskite
solar cells, which have gone from less than 4% efficiency in
converting sunlight to electricity about 10 years ago to nearly 24%
today, competing with the highest-efficiency silicon-based
cells.
Incorporating the crystalline structure of perovskites in PV
cells has proven difficult to scale up to commercial manufacturing,
but NREL recently hailed the success of R&D that resulted in a
far more efficient and low-cost process of printing entire
perovskite devices on paper-thin flexible glass.
"We have shown that perovskite-based solar cells could be
produced quickly and inexpensively using techniques such as
roll-to-roll manufacturing," said former NREL Director Martin Kelly
in May 2019 testimony before the Senate Energy and Natural
Resources Committee. "We are convinced … these materials would
forever transform the US solar industry."
First Solar received one of the largest grants, $2.5 million, to
fund the development of new cost-competitive manufacturing methods
for scaling up perovskite modules. The company will use a pilot
line to verify the process' feasibility, with the hopes of
demonstrating with a module with 22% power conversion efficiency.
The company will provide $650,000 as its cost share.
Additionally, the DOE is providing $14 million for a testing
center to independently evaluate the performance of perovskite
devices, and launching a competition to award $3 million in seed
capital for new companies.
CSP's uphill battle
DOE appears to face a steeper hill to boost CSP, which has never
taken off in the US due to high capital costs, poor capacity
factor, and opposition from environmentalists and conservationists
who say the blinding light and high heat levels at solar thermal
plants kill birds and endangers other sensitive desert species.
DOE is looking to provide $33 million for projects to improve
CSP's reliability, performance, and dispatchability; develop new
applications for industrial plants to replace more polluting
process heat technologies; and advancements in long-duration
thermal-energy storage devices that can be paired with CSP plants,
some of which already are equipped with molten salt storage.
In addition, DOE's Sandia National Laboratories will get $25
million to build a facility to test a next-generation CSP plant at
the National Solar Thermal Test Facility. According to DOE, the
laboratory will test a multi-megawatt-thermal CSP test facility
that will include a falling-particle receiver system that can
operate for thousands of hours, store up to six hours of thermal
energy, and heat a working fluid to more than 700 degrees
Celsius.
Original reporting by Ellen Meyers, The Energy
Daily.
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