$50m program seeks to reclaim US edge in solar market

A new $50 million US Department of Energy (DOE) program aims to “help the nation reclaim its competitive edge in solar manufacturing.”

The SUNPATH (for “Scaling Up Nascent PV At Home”) program is the second solar Photovoltaic Manufacturing Initiative (PVMI) in the DOE’s SunShot initiative, which aims to reduce the cost of solar power by about 75 percent by 2020.

“This investment provides a necessary boost to domestic solar manufacturing businesses, encouraging them to keep jobs here and establish America’s leadership in the world’s growing clean energy economy,” said Energy Secretary Steven Chu. “In addition to invigorating clean energy manufacturing, this program will help achieve the SunShot goal of making unsubsidized utility-scale solar cost-competitive with other forms of energy by the end of the decade.”

As recently as 1995, the US had a dominant share of the global solar market and manufactured around 43 percent of the world’s photovoltaic (PV) panels. Since then, the US market share shrank to 27 percent by 2000 and to 7 percent by 2010.

The SUNPATH program aims to increase domestic manufacturing by investing in PV businesses with sustainable, competitive cost and performance advantages. The program will target companies looking to launch pilot-scale commercial production, a stage often threatened by funding gaps that hurt businesses at a critical stage.

Companies seeking funding through the program should have industrial-scale demonstrations of PV modules, cells or substrates that offer lower-cost solutions in line with the SunShot goal. Applications for SUNPATH funding are due by October 28, 2011.