$150m project to cut solar manufacturing costs receives US government funding

$231 million was handed out yesterday by the US government to develop solar wafer technology and offshore wind and geothermal projects. A company in Massachusetts, 1366 Technologies received the lion’s share of the money with $150 million going to their project to develop multicrystalline solar wafers at half the cost of current production. 700MW to 1,000MW of silicon-based wafers will be produced per year at the company.

The process of creating the wafers will take 90% less energy and a fraction of the time of other methods, revolutionizing the industry. The company has received grants in the past from federal sources, but this will be orders of magnitude higher and a massive boost to American renewable technologies. The industry however, is struggling in the face of cheap Chinese imports, which have increased massively and bankrupted other American solar companies back by the government.

The government has a goal of making 80% of the US energy sources renewable by 2035 and to that end there has been further investment in a variety of wind and geothermal projects aimed at improving technologies. Currently only around 7% of energy use is from renewables in the US, which does not compare favorably to other developed countries.

These are important steps to making one of the most energy inefficient countries sustainable and further injections of cash may be required to maintain innovation in a cash strapped economy. It will be interesting to see how the next government deals with renewables investments as the election year nears.