Funding, Grants & Awards
Penn State Wins $2.9 Million To Develop Concentrating Solar Panels
Pennsylvania State University has won a $2.9 million grant to develop fixed-tilt
concentrating photovoltaic panel that will provide significantly more solar energy than conventional solar panels.
Provided by the United States Department of Energy's
Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy (ARPA-E), the grant is part of $24 million in
federal funding aimed at improving the efficiency of solar panels. Penn State's grant comes specifically from ARPA-E's
Micro-Scale Optimized Solar-Cell Arrays with Integrated
Concentration (MOSAIC) project designed "to develop a new class of concentrating photovoltaic technology to exploit the high efficiency of
solar cells used in space for rooftops here on Earth," according to a news release.
Lead by Assistant Professor of Electrical Engineering Chris Giebink, the "team will combine arrays of
plastic lenslets and a novel translational tracking system to concentrate light over 400 times onto microscale, ultra-high efficiency
photovoltaic cells all in the form of a standard rooftop solar panel," according to information released by the university.
The new panels will mostly use relatively cheap materials such as Plexiglas, allowing them to be manufactured and sold at competitive costs
while perhaps doubling the efficiency of conventional panels.
About the Author
Joshua Bolkan is contributing editor for Campus Technology, THE Journal and STEAM Universe. He can be reached at [email protected].
