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Renewable Energy News

MONDAY 21 DECEMBER, 2009 |

Australian Solar Institute Issues $11 Million In Grants

by Energy Matters

The Australian Solar Institute (ASI) announced last week it would make $11 million available to help fund five research and development projects in order to support and accelerate the growth of Australia's solar technology sector.

The ASI is part of the Australian Government’s $4.5 billion Clean Energy Initiative (CEI), which includes the Solar Flagships initiative.

The 5 projects are:

- University of New South Wales: Development and commercialisation of high efficiency silicon solar cell technology

This project builds on the Solar Industrial Research Facility (SIRF) and will aim to demonstrate lower cost commercial production of high efficiency solar cells.

- University of Newcastle: Fabrication of thermionic devices using directional solidification / sintering processes for high temperature concentrating solar thermal applications.

Thermionic devices for solar energy harvesting offer the potential to generate electricity directly from heat. This project aims to develop and demonstrate a thermionic device for electricity production using advanced ceramics.

- Australian National University: Plasmonics for high efficiency photovoltaic solar cells using nanotechnology to capture more light.

This project will undertake research to increase the light captured by thinner layers of silicon through the use of plasmonics. The plasmonic solar cell will use nanoscale metal particles on the cell surface which act like tiny antennas, directing the light into the solar cell; making it more efficient.

- University of Queensland: New materials and architectures for organic solar cells - beyond the Shockley-Queisser Limit.

This project will take advantage of ideas which have been shown to dramatically increase the efficiency of traditional inorganic PV cells and apply these principles to Organic photovoltaic solar cells (OPVs). The Shockley–Queisser limit is the maximum theoretical efficiency of a solar cell using a p-n junction to collect power from the cell. The limit places maximum solar conversion efficiency around 30%

The ASI board says it has also authorised further discussions relating to several other promising project to have emerged from the first round of applications.