Improved Solar Technologies

The improved PV production technologies focus includes testing and demonstration of new solar technologies and strategies with improved performance/reliability or lower costs. The projects funded in this focus area aim to demonstrate the viability of distributed concentrating PV (CPV), and combining PV with energy storage. By concentrating the available solar radiation on smaller cell material, CPV systems provide for much higher efficiencies compared to traditional flat plate PV. This is both beneficial to reducing system costs with less cell material requirements as well as more energy production in a given area. However, the current market place lacks data on the reliability and long term performance of such systems to allow for financing of CPV projects. Providing long term performance data and information to establish the bankability and reliability will enable confidence towards CPV in the distributed generation market.

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