The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) Solar Energy Technologies Office (SETO) has issued a notice of intent (NOI) to release a funding opportunity announcement (FOA) of up to $36 million for research, development, and demonstration projects on two major thin-film photovoltaic (PV) technologies: metal halide perovskites and cadmium telluride (CdTe).
The DOE stated that advancing perovskite and CdTe technologies will help scale domestic solar manufacturing capacity, strengthen the solar supply chain, and speed solar deployment.
The FOA is expected to be released in September 2023 and is expected to be restricted to for-profit lead applicants.
$20 million of this opportunity will fund projects on industrial perovskite PV research and development to enable future commercialization by reaching specific thresholds of efficiency, long-term reliability, manufacturability, and economic viability. Quantitative guidelines within the NOI describe what a competitive application is expected to include for a given funding level.
$16 million of this opportunity will fund projects to advance cadmium telluride (CdTe) PV research, development, demonstration, and commercialization across the materials, equipment, installation, and performance monitoring supply chain to improve the competitiveness of the domestic CdTe PV industry.
