Research Projects - Renewable Power

1366 Technologies, Inc. (Lexington, MA), in collaboration with the Massachuseetts Institute of Technology, will develop a breakthrough new "Direct Wafer" technology to form high efficiency "monocrystalline-equivalent" solar silicon wafers directly from the silicon melt at 1/5th the cost of the current industry standard. These next generation solar silicon wafers have the potential to decrease the amount of expensive silicon material needed for silicon solar cells by a factor of > 3 and to decrease installed solar power system costs by a factor of ~2. If successful, this leveraged technology in the silicon solar value chain will slash installed system costs and rapidly accelerate the deployment of carbon-free solar power in the U.S.

Breakthrough High Efficiency Shrouded Wind Turbine

FloDesign Wind Turbine Corporation (Wilbraham, MA) will develop a new shrouded, axial-flow wind turbine known as the Mixer Ejector Wind Turbine (MEWT), which is capable of delivering significantly more energy per unit swept area with greatly reduced rotor loading as compared to existing horizontal axis wind turbines (HAWT). Prototypes will be built and tested, demonstrating the advantages of lightweight materials and a protective shroud that will reduce noise and safety concerns and accelerate distributed wind applications.

Adaptive Turbine Blades: Blown Wing Technology for Low-Cost Wind Power

PAX Streamline, Inc (San Rafael, CA), along with Georgia Tech Research Institute, will lead a project to adapt Blown Wing technology for wind turbines, culminating in a 100 kW prototype. Circulation control technology or "Blown Wing" technology creates a virtual airfoil by jetting compressed air out of orifices along a wing and has the potential to radically simplify the manufacture and operation of wind turbines. Unlike a fixed airfoil, a Blown Wing can be dynamically adjusted to maximize power under a wide range of wind conditions, and can be generated from a slotted extruded pipe that can be domestically manufactured at a fraction of the cost.

Low-contact drilling technology to enable economical EGS wells

Foro Energy, Inc (Littleton, CO) will develop a disruptive new hybrid thermal-mechanical drilling technology to enable rapid and sustained penetration of ultra-hard rock formations to open up cost effective access to the U.S.'s vast domestic store of U.S. geothermal energy available in deep ultra-hard crytstallinecrystalline basement rock. If successful, this project will revolutionize the geothermal energy field and will allow the U.S. to exploit a huge new source of domestically available baseload carbon-free power.