Eighteen distinct projects have received the financing, which consists of USD 16 million from the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law.
The US Department of Energy on May 16, 2024 went on to announce an investment of US$71 million in research, development, and demonstration projects so as to advance the country’s solar supply chain.
The funding, which goes on to include US$16 million coming from the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, has been distributed across 18 projects. 10 out of these 18 are aimed in terms of fostering solar innovation, with 3 going to seek to support the development of technologies for onshore silicon wafers as well as cell manufacturing and there would be 7 that would look to advance the dual-use photovoltaic-PV tech, like building integrated PV as well as agrivoltaics.
It is well to be noted that the biggest award in the group happens to be US$11.2 million for Ubiquity Solar so as to help them develop the Continuous Czochralski Method- CCd method in terms of manufacturing silicon ingots.
There are going to be another 8 projects that are going to try to advance the leadership of the US in thin-film technologies like perovskites tandems as well as cadmium telluride- CdTe.
It is worth noting that First Solar Inc., the US thin-film solar module manufacturer, has gone on to secure a couple of awards, the first being US$6 million for a project in order to design tandem perovskite as well as copper indium gallium diselenide- CIGS PV modules, and another being US$15 million for another project so as to increase cadmium telluride- CdTe module efficiency.
Notably, the DoEs US$71 million allocation has found a place in the White House announcement with actions so as to beef up solar manufacturing in the US.