Solar Energy Technologies Office Fiscal Year 2024 Concentrating Solar-Thermal Power Research, Development, and Demonstration Funding Program is sponsored by U.S. Department of Energy Solar Energy Technologies Office (SETO). A funding program supporting research, development, and demonstration projects in concentrating solar-thermal power, aiming to advance solar energy technologies and reduce costs.

Fiscal Year 2024 Small Innovative Projects in Solar (SIPS): Concentrating Solar-Thermal Power and Photovoltaics Funding Program | Department of Energy Fiscal Year 2024 Small Innovative Projects in Solar (SIPS): Concentrating Solar-Thermal Power and Photovoltaics Funding Program Light Text on a Dark Overlay (Default) The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) Solar Energy Technologies Office (SETO) Small Innovative Projects in Solar (SIPS) 2024 funding program provides $5.

4 million for seedling R&D projects that focus on innovative and novel ideas in photovoltaics (PV) and concentrating solar-thermal power (CSP) and are riskier than research ideas based on established technologies. DOE announced the funding opportunity on January 18, 2024 and announced 16 selected projects on October 3, 2024. SIPS is an ongoing SETO program that has funded more than 100 projects since it began in 2015.

The SIPS program focuses on innovative, targeted, early-stage ideas in solar energy research that can produce significant results within the first year of performance, laying the foundation for continued research and quickly validating novel concepts. Projects in the CSP topic area will investigate the applicability and robustness of novel ideas in CSP.

Responsive concepts include all aspects of CSP plants with thermal energy storage, as well as solar-thermal industrial process heat innovations and solar-thermal fuel systems. Projects in the PV topic area will focus on new and emerging areas of PV research that can produce significant results within the first year of performance and, if successful, lay the foundation for continued research.

This funding opportunity is designed to streamline the application process to encourage applications from early-career researchers who have never applied or been selected for a SETO project award. In addition, applicants must submit a plan to broaden the participation of well-qualified members of underrepresented groups on their teams.

These efforts will help to achieve the administration’s goal to increase the diversity of those working in applied energy research fields.

SIPS projects will support the government-wide approach to addressing the climate crisis by driving innovation, increasing the diversity of those working in applied energy research, and speeding CSP and PV deployment to achieve a carbon-free electricity sector by 2035 and net-zero emissions energy sector by 2050.

- Award and cost share amounts are subject to change pending negotiations – Topic Area 1: Concentrating Solar-Thermal Power Project Name: Novel High Flux High Temperature Digital Image Correlation for Solar Receiver Strain Monitoring DOE Award Amount: $400,000 Principal Investigator: Todd Otanicar Project Summary: This project seeks to adopt an approach known as digital image correlation to monitor the strain in modeled solar receiver structures.

Monitoring 3D strain profiles during steady-state and transient operating conditions will increase understanding of thermo-mechanical strains in CSP components during real-world operational conditions. This will result in improved designs that consider the full thermomechanical loading and deeper understanding of operational profiles for CSP plants that could increase operational performance.

GE Vernova Advanced Research Project Name: Hybrid Active Magnetic Bearing (HAMB) DOE Award Amount: $400,000 Principal Investigator: Dongil Shin Project Summary: This project seeks to develop and validate a novel hybrid active magnetic bearing (HAMB) system concept for supercritical carbon dioxide turbomachinery applications.

The HAMB concept will increase the bearing’s load capacity and enhance controllability, leading to improved bearing performance and rotor stabilization. The design also allows a more than 30% reduction in manufacturing costs compared to a traditional active magnetic bearing system.

National Renewable Energy Laboratory Project Name: Proactive Retrofitting of Molten Salt Tank Floor for Enhanced Reliability DOE Award Amount: $400,000 Principal Investigator: Youyang Zhao Project Summary: This project aims to develop material that can be retrofitted to the floor of nitrate salt hot tanks.

The goal is to reduce the maximum thermal gradient and thermal stress on the molten salt tank floor by more than 50% and reduce the risk of floor buckling. The retrofit can be applied to in-service hot tanks at similar risk of floor failures, without requiring major modifications to tank floor, walls, and foundation.

National Renewable Energy Laboratory Project Name: Improving Near-surface Wind Data to Assist Solar Siting DOE Award Amount: $400,000 Principal Investigator: Ulrike Egerer Project Summary: This project aims to support solar energy siting by addressing the critical need for accurate near-surface wind data in CSP and PV projects.

The team is developing a machine learning-supported model to enhance the spatial and temporal resolution of existing near-surface wind data in atmospheric models, filling a crucial gap in the understanding of winds at heights relevant to CSP collectors. This innovation will contribute to achieving SETO’s CSP cost target goals by minimizing wind-related uncertainties in CSP resource assessment and optimizing collector designs.

Project Name: Shining a Light on CSP: Implementation of Small-Scale, Combined-Cycle CSP on Urban Brownfields for Industrial Process Heat DOE Award Amount: $400,000 Principal Investigator: Laura Schaefer Project Summary: This project aims to integrate geographic information system tools for brownfield mapping with direct normal irradiation, population levels, and industrial locations.

Coupled with detailed simulations of CSP combined heat/power systems and survey data, this information can help to provide thermodynamic, economic, and sociological impact assessments.

The project will demonstrate that effectively combining novel, distributed, small-scale CSP plants with supercritical carbon dioxide heat pump/organic Rankine cycles and thermal energy storage located in urban brownfields can contribute to reaching U.S. goals for solar generation capacity at economically-viable levels for electricity and industrial process heat.

Project Name: High Heat Flux Solar Receiving via Jet Impingement Heat Transfer and Enhancement DOE Award Amount: $400,000 Principal Investigator: Peiwen Li Project Summary: This project seeks to develop innovative jet impingement flow solar receivers to improve CSP system energy efficiency. When spraying working fluid as a jet, the innovation will apply additional enhancements to optimize heat transfer design of the gas solar receiver.

The high heat flux solar receiver could impact a range of solar thermal technologies, including power generation and industrial process heating.

Project Name: Integrated Chiller Enhanced Supercritical Carbon Dioxide Power Cycle (ICE-sCO 2 ) Location: Gainesville, FL DOE Award Amount: $400,000 Principal Investigator: Pratap Pullammanappallil Project Summary: This project aims to investigate a novel integrated chilling technology for supercritical carbon dioxide cycles.

The concept could provide the ability to control the compressor inlet temperature and maintain optimum performance, especially without water consumption. The team expects that incorporating the novel cooling concept could reduce the cost of the power systems driven by CSP by as much as 20%.

Project Name: A Novel Particle Coating Method for Sintering Prevention and Reduced Heat Loss in High Concentration Ratio Gen3 Particle CSP System DOE Award Amount: $400,000 Principal Investigator: Ben Xu Project Summary: This project is developing an innovative process for applying high-temperature coating materials to the surface of silicon dioxide particles to prevent particle binding and improve its solar absorptance.

The project provides an alternative pathway for selecting particle material for application in Generation 3 CSP systems.

Project Name: SOLARCODE: Wireless Computing for Data Collection and Processing in Concentrated Solar Power Fields Location: Albuquerque, NM DOE Award Amount: $400,000 Principal Investigator: Eirini Eleni Tsiropoulou Project Summary: This project seeks to introduce wireless computing, a groundbreaking methodology for data collection and processing, in CSP fields.

This approach could efficiently fuse sensing data from multiple concurrent sensor transmissions and accurately retrieve each sensor’s signal at the receiver. This will allow for real-time analysis of data gathered at the field and will allow operators to run CSP plants safely, efficiently, and reliably.

Topic Area 2: Photovoltaics Project Name: Modular Utility-scale PV Inverters with Robustly Characterized Low-Cost Planar Transformers DOE Award Amount: $250,000 Principal Investigator: Mike Ranjram Project Summary: This project aims to create a new type of power electronic converter—which connects solar photovoltaic (PV) systems to the electric grid—that is modular, and easy to repair and upgrade.

This project team will test these converters to guard against critical modes of failure in a prototype suitable for deployment in a utility-scale PV inverter. This will support longer operational lifetimes of PV systems while maintaining high system performance.

Georgia Tech Research Corp Project Name: Low-cost Metrology Advancement for Perovskite Defect Quantification due to Environmental Stressors DOE Award Amount: $250,000 Principal Investigator: Erin Ratcliff Project Summary : This project aims to develop an instrument to test for defects in perovskite thin films by degrading perovskite devices and analyzing them.

If successful, the instrument could be integrated into high-performance manufacturing lines and testing protocols, resulting in more accurate, reliable, and accelerated stability protocols for metal halide-perovskite photovoltaics (PV), increasing PV system lifetimes.

National Renewable Energy Laboratory Project Name: Electromagnetic Heating for Low-cost Photovoltaic Materials Activation DOE Award Amount: $250,000 Principal Investigator: Thien Truong Project Summary: This project will explore alternatives to traditional firing processes in silicon solar cell manufacturing, which is needed for making gridlines on the cells and for doing common treatments to improve cell performance.

An alternative approach offers the advantages of being quick and cost-effective, while providing precise selective heating on specific materials without damaging the adjacent layer. Additionally, this project will include an economic performance analysis for manufacturers to evaluate the cost implications of replacing the firing processes with this innovative technique.

National Renewable Energy Laboratory Project Name: Visualizing Local Electric Fields with 4D STEM: Accessing the Missing Link for PV Device Optimization DOE Award Amount: $250,000 Principal Investigator: Harvey Guthrie Project Summary: This project aims to use scanning transmission electron microscopy (STEM) to demonstrate how perovskite interfaces change when operated under light, and how new materials can improve performance in cadmium telluride.

The primary objective of this project is to develop an advanced STEM technique that can be routinely applied within the photovoltaics (PV) research community and enable advancements in thin-film PV material cell efficiency and durability.

Project Name: ITO-Free and Rollable Perovskite Solar Cells Location: West Lafayette, IN DOE Award Amount: $250,000 Principal Investigator: Letian Dou Project Summary: This project seeks to introduce an innovative material for an electrically conductive transparent front layer of a perovskite module which would be easier to manufacture than the currently used indium tin oxide (ITO).

This transparent conductive layer could be used to create flexible, high-efficiency, and cost-effective perovskite solar modules. Through this strategy, a fully rollable perovskite solar cell—with a bending radius smaller than one millimeter and a power conversion efficiency of over 18%—will be demonstrated.

This project could enable a shift from costly, inflexible ITO module front layers to those that are flexible, cheap, and easily processed for perovskite photovoltaics and deliver on the promise of low cost solar.

University of California: San Diego Project Name: Bilithic Integration of Perovskite Solar Modules DOE Award Amount: $250,000 Principal Investigator: David Fenning Project Summary: This project seeks to develop a new approach to thin-film photovoltaic (PV) module fabrication to streamline manufacturing.

This approach leverages the properties of perovskites in a “bilithic” integration of the module, which in contrast to a monolithic integration, allows independent processing of the top and bottom of the module and then sandwiching the two sides together. This approach enables new possibilities for how perovskite layers are arranged for better overall PV performance and easier manufacturing.

Project Name: Inorganic Charge Transport Layers via Atomic Layer Deposition for Perovskite Solar Cells and Minimodules Location: Coral Gables, FL DOE Award Amount: $250,000 Principal Investigator: He Wang Project Summary: This project seeks to improve perovskite cells by using a novel approach which offers precise control over material composition and thickness to mitigate issues with perovskite stability.

By the end of the project, the team will apply this approach to both cells and minimodules to demonstrate relevance to the photovoltaics industry. For FOA-specific support, contact SETO. SIPS@ee.

doe. gov . Explore past SIPS projects .