Projects
The Photovoltaic (PV) research and development program at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) is committed to renewed success in all of our research projects and we will continue to offer our "best and brightest" innovations to industry, laboratory research organizations, and educational institutions across the United States.
The PV research program at NREL has a mission to improve America's security, environmental quality, and economic prosperity through public-private partnerships that bring reliable and affordable PV technologies to the marketplace. Our goals, on behalf of the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) Solar Energy Technologies Program are to:
- Reduce the cost of solar energy
- Make it a competitive and sustainable energy source in today's energy markets.
In the past decade, the average growth of the world PV market has exceeded 30%, making the PV industry one of the most consistent high-growth industries in the world. Critical to commercial success of PV technologies are advances in module efficiencies, inverter performance, and improvements in cost, reliability, and balance of systems.
The following are our primary research projects:
- Building-Integrated PV Project
- Electronic Materials and Devices
- High-Performance Photovoltaics Project
- Measurements and Characterization
- Performance and Reliability
- Process Development and Integration
- PV Manufacturing R&D Project
- Silicon Materials and Devices
- Systems Engineering
- Thin-Film Partnership
