National Center for Photovoltaics
The National Center for Photovoltaics (NCPV) at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) focuses on technology innovations that drive industry growth in U.S. photovoltaic (PV) manufacturing. The NCPV includes multiple capabilities in PV research, development, deployment, and outreach.
To help the U.S. photovoltaic industry maintain a competitive position, the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) created the NCPV in 1996. Learn more about the inaugural history of the NCPV.
Today, the NCPV activities support the DOE SunShot Initiative, which is administered by the DOE Solar Energy Technologies Office. The goal is to make large-scale solar energy systems (at low penetration) cost-competitive with other energy sources by 2020. The NCPV coordinates its research and goals with researchers from across the country, including the Quantum Energy and Sustainable Solar Technologies (QESST) Center and the Bay Area PV Consortium.
Bill Tumas is acting director of the NCPV.
Learn more by contacting the NCPV.
NREL partnered with other members of the Global Alliance of Solar Energy Research Institutes to consider the potential of terawatt-scale photovoltaics to transform the global energy system and the associated opportunities and challenges. See the resulting May 2019 Science article to learn more (Summary | Reprint | Full text).
Also see the April 2017 Science article from an earlier workshop that considered trajectories and challenges for terawatt-scale PV (Summary | Reprint | Full text).