Financial - Page 13

The US Department of Energy (DOE) will allocate up to USD$125.5 million in financing for research and development (R&D) projects in the solar field. The research will target reducing the cost of solar technology, which in turn will enhance the competitiveness of the domestic photovoltaic (PV) production and improve the grid reliability.

Among other projects, the DOE funds will see USD$15 million go to 8-12 projects that aim to prolong the lifespan of PV systems and cut hardware costs for plants using traditional silicon solar cells, as well as thin-film, tandem and perovskite cells.

A Swansea University-led project which will help communities in developing countries to generate their own solar power has been awarded £800,000 by the UK government. The money will be used to construct prototype buildings and support collaboration between experts from five countries ' India, Kazakhstan, Mexico, South Africa, and the UK.

While perovskite solar cells should be cheap to produce, use widely-available materials and be flexible with the ability to be printed directly onto a base, the task taken on is to show that this technology can be manufactured and used effectively on actual buildings in developing countries. This is where the SUNRISE project and this new funding comes in.

After ordering a 100 MW HJT production line from Meyer Burger in August 2019, Oxford PV has placed another partial order to expand the HJT line to an integrated 125 MW production line for high-efficiency perovskite HJT tandem cells.

The Swiss solar PV equipment manufacturer Meyer Burger Technology has received this partial order, worth CHF 18 million ($18.2 million).

An HZB team has successfully raised funds from the 'Helmholtz European Partnering Program' of the Helmholtz Association to expand cooperation with partners of the University of Ljubljana, Slovenia. The topics of the cooperation are tandem solar cells made of perovskite and silicon and, in particular, their precise characterization.

The TAPAS project is funded by the Helmholtz European Partnering programme for the next three years with 250,000 euros per year each. Following an evaluation, the funding period can be extended by two years. The Helmholtz European Partnering programme was set up to strengthen the European research area, in particular cooperation with countries in Southern, Central and Eastern Europe.

German university the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT), the Center for Solar Energy and Hydrogen Research Baden-Würtetemburg (ZSW) and CIGS module manufacturer Nice Solar Energy have announced an ambition to design tandem PV modules based on CIGS and perovskite, which can theoretically achieve efficiencies well above 30%.

The joint 'Capitano' project will run for three years and has received more than €5 million from Germany's Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Energy. The aim of the project is to develop cells with stable higher efficiencies, which can be interconnected to form efficient tandem solar modules.

European Union awards, given to early-career researchers, have recently been given to eight Cambridge researchers, among which were ones working on perovskite-related projects.

The European Research Council (ERC) Starting Grants have been awarded to 408 researchers from across Europe. The awards will help individual researchers to build their own teams and conduct world-leading research across all disciplines, creating an estimated 2,500 jobs for postdoctoral fellows, PhD students and other staff at the host institutions.

After forming a strategic partnership in March 2019 between Meyer Burger and Oxford Photovoltaics, Meyer Burger has announced that it has received its first order from Oxford Photovoltaics (Oxford PV), for a heterojunction (HJT) manufacturing line including necessary adaptions enabling the upgrade to perovskite-on-HJT tandem technology.

The order for the upgrade itself will reportedly follow later this year. The current contract volume is about CHF 20 million and provides Oxford PV with an initial manufacturing capacity of 100 MW with plans to expand tandem solar cell production capacity to 250 MW by the end of 2020.

Oxford PV recently announced it has closed its Series D funding round. An additional £34 million, following the £31 million first close, brings the funding round total to £65 million.

The first close, announced in March 2019, included a significant new investment from Goldwind, the leading provider of integrated renewable energy solutions in China, as well as investment from existing shareholders including Equinor and Legal & General Capital. The additional funds include the major new investment from Meyer Burger, the leading photovoltaic equipment supplier, announced in March 2019, with the remaining investment coming from other new and existing investors.

The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) announced funding of up to $130 million for new research to advance early-stage solar technologies.

This funding program targets five research areas: photovoltaics (PV), concentrating solar-thermal power (CSP), soft costs reduction, innovations in manufacturing, and solar systems integration. These projects will aim to make solar energy more affordable, reliable, and secure, while working to boost domestic solar manufacturing, reduce red tape, and make PV more resilient to cyberattack.

Oxford Photovoltaics and Meyer Burger Technology have entered into a strategic partnership and signed an exclusive cooperation agreement to jointly accelerate the development of mass production technology for perovskite on silicon heterojunction (HJT) tandem solar cells.

Meyer Burger and Oxford PV agreed to combine Meyer Burger's leading HJT and SmartWire Connection technology with Oxford PV's perovskite solar cell technology. Meyer Burger will sell a 200 MW HJT line for the pilot production of tandem cells that will be ramped up by the end of 2020 in Oxford PV's Brandenburg an der Havel facility. The initial tandem solar cell efficiency target for the 200 MW pilot production line will be 27%. The characteristics of Meyer Burger's HJT cells make them the perfect bottom cells for Oxford PV's perovskite top cell layers.