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First Solar announces their first solar plus storage project

Center member First Solar announced their first solar plus storage project last week after being selected to provide power during peak hours of 3-8 PM for the Arizona Public Service. The project will utilize a 50-megawatt battery system and came in at a rate lower than more conventional bids. You can read more about the project here.

February 12, 2018

Organic Photovoltaics: Today and Tomorrow

Nicholas DeWeerd of Colorado State was our most recent Distinguished Lecture Series speaker and he shared with us an update on the state of the current industry research in the organic PV sector and also touched base on where things might be headed going forward. If you missed the talk, please feel free to watch a replay here at our YouTube channel.

February 22, 2018

New Solar Technologies: From Concept to Commercialization

Taylor Harvey, one of the Co-Directors of our Texas A&M University site, speaks about his experience of going through the NSF I-Corps program and his eventual efforts at bringing a new solar technology to market. Taylor discusses some of the challenges and opportunities he experienced while working toward this goal.

A video of the talk is available here.

April 7, 2018

Atomic Scale Simulations for Photovoltaics Applications

Umberto Martinez of Synopsys QuantumWise recently gave a talk on the subject of Atomic Scale Scimulations and how some of the lessons learned from the semiconductor industry are affecting their usage in Photovoltaics. Two PhD students from CSU, Anthony Nicholson and Aanand Thiyagarajan who spent time in Denmark with his company through the NSF INTERN program, also provided some insight into their findings using these tools.

If you'd like to watch a video of the talk, we have it up on our YouTube channel.

March 24, 2018

Catalyzing Commercialization:
Next-Generation Photovoltaics for Economic, Clean Energy

In the March 2018 issue of AIChE's CEP Magazine, NSF published an article that outlined some of the major breakthroughs that Colorado State has made with their research involving CdTe solar cells. CSU's roadmap suggests a goal of hitting 25% efficiency within the next 3 years. You can read the article in full at AIChE's website.

April 15, 2018

Cherrelle was one of the initial group of graduate students to receive this certificate. Per their web page, "The Graduate Certificate in Engineering Education is designed for graduate students interested in pursuing engineering faculty positions upon graduation. Graduate students seeking this certificate will gain experience in teaching undergraduate engineering courses, learn more about research on teaching and learning, develop their own ideas and philosophy on teaching and create materials that will help in their faculty job search." Congratulations, Cherrelle!

May 25, 2018

Cherrelle Thomas receives UT Austin Graduate Certificate in Engineering Education

Korgel Elected to National Academy of Engineering

Congratulations to our Center Director, Brian Korgel, on being a newly elected member of the National Academy of Engineering!

A full list of the new members has been posted at the NAE's website and can be viewed here.

February 8, 2018

Tim Siegler returns from his INTERNship

UT Austin researcher Tim Siegler recently completed an internship through NSF's INTERN program with center member Equinor ASA (formerly Statoil ASA) in Oslo, Norway. As part of the internship, Tim was able to interface with a number of different business units within Equinor and the Oslo academic PV community, learning about Equinor's renewable energy business. Congrats Tim and welcome back!

August 1, 2018

Tushar Shimpi receives his PhD

Congratulations to Dr. Tushar Shimpi of Colorado State University! Tushar successfully defended his PhD thesis, entitled "Passivation Studies On Cd0.6Zn0.4Te Films Using CdCl2, MgCl2, And ZnCl2 For Top Cell Application In A Multijunction Solar Cell," and plans to continue working at Colorado State as a post-doc on the fabrication of multi-junction solar cells.

June 21, 2018

New Teacher-Training Program Brings Experiential Engineering Education to K-5 Students

NGPV partnered with the Center for Dynamics and Control of Materials in this innovative Research Experiences for Teachers (RET) program for K-5 teachers.

Launched in the summer of 2018 with four participants from three schools in Austin and Round Rock, Texas, the program invited K-5 educators to work with graduate students and faculty for seven weeks to actively engage with cutting-edge engineering and science research. The program included a workshop aimed at finding creative ways to explain the specialized research in which they will have participated over the previous weeks to their students.

To learn more about our past work with RET participants, check out our Education page! We have collected links and provided lesson plans for teachers to utilize.

August 14, 2018

Welcome to our new members CTF Solar and REEL Solar!

We'd like to welcome two new members to the Center. CTF Solar and REEL Solar both have a focus on thin-film CdTe which makes them a natural fit for our Center thanks to the expertise at Colorado State University. We are looking forward to seeing what collaborative projects come out of the work with these two new companies. Welcome!

To learn more about them, find links to their respective web pages at our Members page.

September 18, 2018

UT Austin Research Experience for Teachers (RET) Program featured

A video focused on the collaborative RET program at UT Austin is available here. The program (outlined in a news item below) allows K-5 teachers to spend nearly 2 months working with students and faculty in the lab to bring new cutting-edge research and knowledge back to their students.

October 16, 2018

Christina Moffett joins First Solar

Congratulations to CSU alumna Christina Moffett on joining First Solar after graduation! We love seeing our students continue on working with Center members after they finish school.

October 1, 2018

CSU's progress in solar highlighted

Colorado State recently produced a video for the National Science Foundation to highlight some of the work being done at their site. CSU Site Director Sampath and the Associate Director Kurt Barth give us the scoop.

You can see the video here.

November 3, 2018

Cherrelle Thomas accepts a postdoc position at Sandia

Congratulations to UT Austin alumna Cherrelle Thomas on taking a position at Sandia National Laboratories! Cherrelle is the latest NGPV alumni to move to a current or former member of the Center. Good luck, Cherrelle!

December 10, 2018

Joseph Luther's Distinguished Lecture Series Talk

Thank you to Dr. Joey Luther of NREL for his outstanding talk entitled "Metal Halide Perovskites at the Nanoscale: Implications for Photovoltaics and Optoelectronics." Joey's talk focused on perovskites' potential to transform the marketplace for low-cost PVs. If you missed the talk live, we have a video up on Youtube.

December 14, 2018

TAMUQ students explore solar energy

Our co-director for the Texas A&M site, Robert Balog, is currently based at Texas A&M University at Qatar and he recently brought along his students to see the solar panels on the roof of one of their on-campus buildings. Check out this story from the Gulf Times to find out more information on the course and some of the ways that the panels are being utilized!

December 3, 2018

The Center for Next Generation Photovoltaics Continues to Advance Solar Energy

CSU's Mechanical Engineering department wrote a piece highlighting the fantastic work that Sampath and his team are doing at CSU. Check it out here!

January 29, 2018

Mahesh Morjaria Distinguished Lecture

First Solar's VP of Photovoltaic Systems, Mahesh Morjaria, gave the most recent talk in our Distinguished Lecture Series. Dr. Morjaria's talk, "Advances in Utility-Scale PV Plants: Key Lessons Learned," focus on the advances in utility-scale PV plant design and ways that further cost reductions can be achieved in the future.

You can watch a video of the talk at our Youtube channel. Dr. Morjaria also provided a copy of his slide deck which is available to download here.

January 11, 2018

Looking for older news?

Further news articles from previous years can be accessed by highlighting the News section of the toolbar at the top of the page and selecting a previous year. Click here for 2017.

January 1, 2018