This award is funded under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (Public Law 111-5).
The objective of this research is to develop a new architecture for photovoltaic power conversion that provides substantial improvements over existing technology, including greater energy extraction; improved robustness to partial shading, cell mismatch and aging; and improved system reliability and reduced cost. The approach is to use integrated CMOS power conversion and control circuits to create ?controlled PV cells? that can be stacked in series strings for connection to a high-power grid-tie inverter.
Intellectual Merit
The work is an interdisciplinary effort that will develop and merge advances in nanomaterials, IC circuit design, power topologies, and nonlinear dynamics to achieve greatly improved levels of performance in PV systems.
Broader Impacts
The approach developed by this project can provide major improvements in PV power yield, system cost, reliability, and system efficiency. This will accelerate application of PV technologies and allow greater power yield, providing society with clean energy at lower cost. Undergraduate and graduate students will contribute to the research and will be provided with opportunities to develop their research skills. Participation of underrepresented groups will be encouraged, and individuals in these groups will be provided with careful mentoring. A cross-university research collaboration will be strengthened and extended to include educational activities, such as development of curricula and educational media linked to the research. Partnerships with the MIT Solar Car Team and an elementary school will be used to develop outreach to K-12 students to promote science and engineering.
