Slick Sheet: Project
GE is designing and testing components of a turbine system driven by high-temperature, high-pressure carbon dioxide (CO2) to develop a more durable and efficient energy conversion system. Current solar energy system components break down at high temperatures, shortening the system’s cycle life. GE’s energy storage system stores heat from the sun in molten salt at moderate temperature and uses surplus electricity from the grid to create a phase change heat sink, which helps manage the temperature of the system.
Slick Sheet: Project
Northrop Grumman Aerospace Systems is developing a dish-shaped sunlight-concentrating hybrid solar converter that integrates high-efficiency solar cells and a thermo-acoustic engine that generates electricity directly from heat. Current solar cells lose significant amounts of energy as heat, because they do not have heat storage capability. By integrating a high-temperature solar cell and thermo-acoustic engine into a single system, thermal energy losses are minimized.
Slick Sheet: Project
Gas Technology Institute (GTI) is developing a hybrid solar converter that focuses sunlight onto solar cells with a reflective backside mirror. These solar cells convert most visible wavelengths of sunlight to electricity while reflecting the unused wavelengths to heat a stream of flowing particles. The particles are used to store the heat for use immediately or at a later time to drive a turbine and produce electricity.
Slick Sheet: Project
The University of Tulsa is developing a hybrid solar converter that captures ultraviolet and infrared wavelengths of light in a thermal fluid while directing visible wavelengths of light to a photovoltaic (PV) cell to produce electricity. The PV cells can be kept at moderate temperatures while high-quality heat is captured in the thermal fluid for storage and conversion into electricity when needed.
Slick Sheet: Project
MicroLink Devices is developing a high-efficiency solar cell that can maintain efficient operation at high temperatures and leverage reusable cell templates to reduce overall cell cost. MicroLink’s cell will be able to operate at temperatures above 400°C, unlike today’s solar cells, which lose efficiency rapidly above 100°C and are likely to fail at high temperatures over time.
Slick Sheet: Project
The University of Tulsa is developing a hybrid solar converter with a specialized light-filtering mirror that splits sunlight by wavelength, allowing part of the sunlight spectrum to be converted directly to electricity with photovoltaics (PV), while the rest is captured and stored as heat. By integrating a light-filtering mirror that passes the visible part of the spectrum to a PV cell, the system captures and converts as much as possible of the photons into high-value electricity and concentrates the remaining light onto a thermal fluid, which can be stored and be used as needed.
Publications
Increasing the conversion efficiency of incident solar energy to electricity is a key goal in the solar R&D community. In this issue of Joule, a conceptual hybrid photovoltaic/thermal (PV/T) receiver design is reported by the research groups of Evelyn Wang and Gang Chen. High exergetic efficiency is achieved by absorbing below-bandgap and excessively high-energy photons as thermal energy, while allowing photons at the PV’s bandgap to pass through to the underlying cell.
Blog Posts
Many of ARPA-E’s technology programs seek to break down silos and build new technological communities around a specific energy challenge. The Full-Spectrum Optimized Conversion and Utilization of Sunlight (FOCUS) program is bringing together the photovoltaic (PV) and concentrated solar power (CSP) communities to develop hybrid and cost-competitive solar energy systems. ARPA-E’s FOCUS program has enabled experts from both disciplines to develop a hybrid option that could capture maximum energy out of the full solar spectrum, generating both electricity and usable heat within the same system.
Publications
ABSTRACT: Photovoltaic (PV) solar energy systems are being deployed at an accelerating rate to supply low-carbon electricity worldwide.
Press Releases
Austin, TX – At the University of Texas-Austin today, Energy Secretary Ernest Moniz will announce $30 million in funding to 13 ARPA-E projects to develop transformational hybrid solar energy technologies that deliver cost-effective power when the sun is not shining. These projects will help advance solar energy beyond current photovoltaic (PV) and concentrated solar power (CSP) technologies to drive lower-cost, reliable solar energy deployment.