Sunlight.  Intense enough to burn a hole through steel.  Sufficient enough to power the entire country. 

We’ve all seen at least one home with solar panels on the roof.  Imagine a solar cell the size of a sheet of paper generating the same amount of electricity as as a rooftop full of solar panels.  Imagine an array of low-cost solar collectors mass produced the way automobile windows are manufactured. Imagine strategically deploying these collectors in the Southwestern U.S. to produce all of America’s electricity.  Imagine using these collectors in places around the world where there is no existing electricity grid.  Imagine generating all this solar energy with no requirement for water other than to clean mirrors.

Science Foundation Arizona is funding several projects that can change our perspective on generating electricity. These projects, designed to advance the state of concentrating photovoltaic (CPV) technology, involve real-world collaborations led by the University of Arizona and Arizona State University working several industry partners, including Boeing Spectrolab, Raytheon, Tucson Embedded Systems, United Innovations, Translucent, the California Energy Commission and others.

CPV can be thought as a hybrid of the two most prevalent technologies for generating solar power.

Photovoltaics(PV), also known as solar cells, are semiconductor-like materials that create electricity through absorption of sunlight.  PV is typically used for small-scale generation, such as rooftops but can also be deployed in large-area “utility-scale” applications.

Concentrating Solar Power(CSP) uses vast arrays of mirrors that concentrate the sunlight on a central receiver to generate create steam that drives a conventional turbine.  CSP systems are usually reserved for utility-scale “solar farm” applications covering hundreds or even thousands of acres.

Concentrating PV technology bridges these two conventional approaches by using mirrors that concentrate the sun’s light a remarkable 500 to 1000 times onto ultra high efficiency solar cells specifically designed to absorb a broader range of the sun’s rays and thus create greater amounts of electricity.  

One of the SFAz research grants is supporting a project, led by Dr. Roger Angel at the University of Arizona and Dr. Yong-Hang Zhang at Arizona State University, which combines development of state-of-the-art solar cells with an innovative type of high-concentration collector.  In the true spirit of collaboration, this project leverages UA’s world-renowned Steward Observatory Mirror Lab, ASU’s outstanding research capability in microelectronics, Spectrolab’s leadership in producing high efficiency solar cells, and Translucent’s position as a low-cost substrate manufacturer. 

The goal:  significantly lower the cost of producing large-scale solar energy by “raising the bar” for solar cell efficiency and by developing an innovative, low-cost way to produce the solar systems.  The potential payoff: deployment of low-cost, high-volume solar farms that can generate significant amounts of clean, renewable energy for Arizona, the U.S.

A second SFAz grant is supporting a project designed to develop ultra-high efficiency solar systems for local, off-grid deployment.  A team led by Eric Betterton at the University of Arizona with Raytheon Missile Systems of Tucson and other partners is creating a unique “delivery system” that uses a high-concentration mirror assembly, high efficiency solar cells and a proprietary photovoltaic collector.   The potential payoff:  an ability to rapidly deploy large numbers of highly efficient, small-scale generating stations to our military where alternative sources of electricity are either non-existent or unreliable.

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Concentrating Photovoltaics, part of a larger portfolio of Solar Technology initiatives funded by Science Foundation Arizona, represent research investments designed to stimulate both scientific advancement and economic development.