U.S. Department of Energy (DOE), as an element of its SunShot Advanced PV Manufacturing Partnerships Program, has recently declared a grant of $57 million to the College of Nanoscale Science and Engineering (CNSE) at the State University of New York at Albany.
Veeco Instruments, a solar equipment manufacturer, as a division of the U.S. Photovoltaic Consortium, will work in partnership with CNSE for the project.
The SunShot program of DOE is proposed to cut down the production costs of the solar power systems by around 75%, thus making CIGS (Copper, Indium, Gallium, Selenide) solar systems more cost-efficient than other energy forms before the conclusion of the decade. DOE anticipates that bringing down the energy costs to around $1 per watt or around 6 cents per kWh will assist in the erection of solar power systems all over the country.
Veeco Instruments, in the beginning of the year, had obtained an R&D grant of $4.8M from DOE to quicken the development of its CIGS equipment expertise.
Source: http://www.veeco.com/