Thank you to the IAB for attending our virtual meeting! For those who missed it, minutes and a recording are available through the member login. Our next quarterly updates will be delivered on February 22, 2021.

Varun, the Director of the UT Austin Energy Institute among other things, gave a talk entitled, "Reducing Solar Soft Costs: Who learns what, from whom, and how?" A team of researchers led by UT Austin worked to understand how best practices related to solar installation, permitting, and customer acquisition are transmitted. The talk presented the findings of this research, including network structures and strategies that promote solar knowledge transfer, organizational capacity building, and innovation. 

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If you missed the talk, we've posted a video here on our YouTube Channel!

Thank you to everyone who assisted with the submission of our proposal to NSF for another 5 years in operation as an IUCRC. We should have the final word in early 2021. In the meantime, we'll continue our mission to further establish PV electricity as a major source of energy in the world

Thank you to the IAB for working with us and attending our Spring 2020 virtual IAB meeting! A recording of the meeting is available for members along with minutes and presentation documents. We have scheduled our next virtual IAB meeting for October 20, 2020 and will have an agenda and files posted soon.

If you were unable to attend the talk live, you can watch a recording of it on our YouTube channel.

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Michael, the Chief Technology Offier at Hunt Perovskite Technologies, gave a talk entitled, "An Industrial Perspective on Metal Halide Perovskite Research." The talk consisted of three parts: 1) an overview of photovoltaics (PV) and important commercial considerations, 2) an overview of metal halide perovskite PV, and 3) a snapshot of metal halide perovskite PV research within his company.

Congratulations to NGPV team member Prof. Jim Sites on being awarded the 2020 IEEE William R. Cherry Award. This award, one of the most significant in the PV industry, is to recognize an individual engineer or scientist who has devoted a part of their professional life to the advancement of the science and technology of photovoltaic energy conversion. Congratulations from all of us, Jim! More information can be found here at the IEEE website.

After the initial cancellation of the in-person meeting in April, we will be holding our Spring 2020 IAB Meeting virtually on July 21, 2020. A registration and Zoom link has been sent out to IAB members. Research updates are being posted on the member's site as well.

The Los Angeles Department of Water and Power finalized a landmark deal with 8minute Solar for a 25-year Power Purchase Agreement set at under 2 cents per kilowatt/hour, a new record. This deal represented the lowest price offered in the U.S. and became the largest solar plus storage project in American history as well. This particular purchase will provide LA with about 7% of its energy needs and bring their renewable energy total to nearly 40% of their usage. The project is underway with the first phase set to come on board in 2022 while full operations are complete in 2023.

In this video, Kurt Barth discusses some of the recent advancements in the solar industry and the research being done at Colorado State."If you think about where all our energy comes from, the energy that we have ultimately came from the sun.. we're just taking a long time to harvest that in the case of fossil fuels. But why do that? Let's eliminate the middleman and just take the sun directly as it is and turn that right into electricity."

Congratulations to NGPV alum Tim Siegler on winning the Best Video Presentation award at the recent nanoGe digital conference on Photovoltaics this week! Tim recently took a postdoctoral position at The University of Washington after receiving his PhD from UT Austin. Tim's talk focused on the work that he has done towards lead-free low bandgap perovskites for solar cells. You can watch his presentation, entitled, "TlBr and Tl2AgBr3 Nanocrystals," here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hKzy_uCHPpw.

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nanoGe posted the announcement on their twitter here. Congrats once again, Tim!

Thank you to Mandar Sunthankar and Raju Jairam on completing their terms as IAB Chair and Vice Chair. Mandar and Raju have been instrumental members of our IAB since the Center's founding and have helped shape the IAB and Center's trajectory for many years. Thank you once again!

Taking over as Chair and Vice Chair are Gang Xiong of First Solar and Guillaume Gelinas of 5N Plus, respectively. We are already working hard with the new IAB leadership and look forward to the next 2 years with them in these roles!

Congratulations to Dr. Jennie Yoshimoto and Terra Solar on being selected as one of the 20 winners nationwide in the first stage of the 2020 American-Made Solar Prize. The American-Made Solar Prize is a three-stage, $3 million dollar competition, designed by the U.S. Department of Energy to promote innovation in the solar industry in the United States. Terra Solar's do-it-yourself (DIY) solar energy assembly kit claimed the $50,000 prize and earned a spot in the second stage of the competition.

Jennie is a TAMU alumna and her project application received support from TAMU Co-Director Robert Balog.

Given the current state of COVID-19 and with everyone’s health in mind, we have taken the decision to cancel the NGPV Spring IAB meeting previously scheduled for April 21 in Austin, TX.  We will have more details going forward regarding project updates and other items that would typically be covered at the meeting.

As reported at our recent IAB meeting, Dr. Sampath's group from Colorado State University reported CdTe solar cell with an efficiency of 20.14%. The reported efficiency is the highest among the academia and research institutions. The fabrication and characterization details of solar cell with 20.14% efficiency was presented by Dr. Tushar Shimpi to IAB members in the poster session.

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Congratulations, Team!

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 2019.