SAN FRANCISCO—The U.S. Department of Energy has announced that over $20 million in grants have been awarded to 24 new PV Supply Chain and Cross-Cutting Technology projects, five of which include the Bay area.

The funding for the grants is part of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act which supplemented almost $118 million to the DOE.

According to the Department’s Web site, “The funded projects range from automated assembly to semiconductor fabrication, and target manufacturing and product cost reduction with the potential to have an impact within 2 to 6 years on a substantial segment of the PV industry.”

The applicants were split into two separate topic areas; proof of concept technical/feasibility assessment and research, development and demonstration. The former topic will reward each recipient up to $150,000 over a 12-month period to evaluate or assess and test an idea that can impact the solar photovoltaic industry.

The Bay Area winners in that category are the Palo Alto Research Center, Inc. and Solar Red, based out of San Jose. The latter category will receive up to $3 million during a three-year period for research, evaluation, verification, testing and demonstration. These Bay Area winners included: Sierra Solar Power ($3 million) to accelerate development of a high-volume manufacturing silicon epitaxy growth system, Silicon Genesis Corporation ($3 million) to accelerate development of a silicon wafering tool that enables a dramatic reduction in silicon waste by utilizing a cleaving process as opposed to the conventional wire saw process and XeroCoat ($2.96 million) to develop and commercialize a low-cost, novel glass anti reflective coating that enables high transmission of light and therefore higher energy output from any glass PV module.

“The Photovoltaic (PV) Supply Chain and Cross-Cutting Technologies project identifies and accelerates the development of unique PV products or processes that will impact the solar industry. The project supports the overall goals of the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) Solar Energy Technologies Program (SETP or Solar Program),” states the Web site.

To learn more about these grants, check out the Web site at 1.eere.energy.gov/solar/about.html.