Solar Research News
Explore our archive of solar news stories.
Dec. 20, 2019
The DOE Solar Energy Technologies Office announced 35 student teams from 32 collegiate institutions as finalists in the Solar District Cup Collegiate Design Competition. The Solar District Cup is a new competition, led by NREL, that challenges multidisciplinary student teams to design and model optimized distributed solar energy systems for a campus or urban district by integrating solar, storage, and other technologies.
Dec. 13, 2019
Scientists at NREL achieved a technological breakthrough for solar cells previously thought impossible.
Dec. 6, 2019
The next generation of information technology could take advantage of spintronics--electronics that use the minuscule magnetic fields emanating from spinning electrons as well as the electric charges of the electrons themselves--for faster, smaller electronic devices that use less energy.
Dec. 6, 2019
NREL has partnered with the SolSmart program, which recognizes cities, counties, and regional organizations across the United States that have successfully adopted solar energy into their communities.
Nov. 4, 2019
Solar Energy Technologies Office (SETO) Director Charlie Gay, an internationally recognized pioneer in photovoltaics (PV), retired from the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) on Nov. 1.
Oct. 29, 2019
The U.S. Department of Energy's National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) today won two R&D 100 Awards from R&D World magazine.
Oct. 1, 2019
Round 1 of the American-Made Solar Prize concluded as two final winners received $500,000 each.
Sept. 17, 2019
In many tribal communities, electricity is expensive, unreliable, or completely unavailable. NREL Engineer Sherry Stout works with such communities, helping them use renewable energy to reduce costs and access reliable power.
Sept. 11, 2019
In a recent article for Nature Sustainability, NREL's Lead Energy-Water-Land Analyst Jordan Macknick and co-authors investigated the potential benefits of co-located agriculture and solar photovoltaic (PV) infrastructure (dubbed “agrivoltaics”) on food production, irrigation water requirements, and energy production.
Sept. 5, 2019
Wells Fargo Innovation Incubator member company Yotta Solar brought their behind-the-panel battery system to NREL for analysis this summer. It's a technology so new, researchers from multiple disciplines were pushed to develop next-generation evaluation techniques.
Aug. 19, 2019
The brothers both previously worked at NREL, although the older one is now a university professor in Wisconsin.
Aug. 19, 2019
A new paper reports a cell efficiency of 20.8%, representing a crossing point for the new group V technology relative to historic copper technology.
July 26, 2019
The newly published research in Nature Communications details how the NREL researchers refined the D-HVPE process to produce solar cells more than 20 times faster than the process now commonly used.
July 16, 2019
Winners of the PECASE are nominated by a participating federal agency--the Department of Energy in this case--with the final selections made by the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy.
July 3, 2019
Modeled on a Department of Defense effort to put emerging technologies into the hands of the military, ARPA-E provides funds to overcome roadblocks that would otherwise prevent promising energy ideas from reaching the public.
June 19, 2019
This summer, NREL supported a local camp that explores the intersection of art and science, giving campers the opportunity to make connections between creativity and future career paths.
June 7, 2019
The range of innovations represented by the competitors include cell and device-related concepts as well as module and application hardware.
June 5, 2019
Solar cells made from elements in the third and fifth columns of the periodic table have been shown to be highly efficient at converting sunlight into energy, but their high costs pose a drawback and limited their use to niche applications.
May 28, 2019
The Solar Prize program supports entrepreneurs as they develop transformative technology ideas into concepts and then into early-stage prototypes ready for industry testing.
May 7, 2019
The society singled Beard out specifically for his "outstanding contributions to controlling ultra-fast carrier dynamics in nanostructures and perovskite semiconductors."
April 22, 2019
While hundreds of millions of tons of trash continue to be dumped into American landfills annually, a growing percentage has been diverted to recycling centers since the first Earth Day in 1970. But these centers aren't set up for renewable energy technologies.
April 18, 2019
Researchers at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory report making a significant breakthrough by producing a tandem perovskite solar cell that pushes the technology closer to its maximum efficiency.
April 1, 2019
Low-impact development of solar installations can shelter vegetation and boost energy production, creating a win-win-win for food, water, and renewable energy.
March 15, 2019
The initial Champion Module Efficiencies chart contains 73 data points, dating to 1988, and broken out into 19 different technologies.
Feb. 25, 2019
On May 8, investors, start-up companies, and industry leaders from around the world will convene in Denver, Colo., for the third Emerging Markets Day, a forum to discuss the most promising cleantech solutions to the pressing energy challenges faced by emerging economies.
Feb. 25, 2019
The 30 companies were selected after a competitive application and review process from more than 150 applicants.
Feb. 25, 2019
NREL achieves the world's most accurate method to measure PV performance, with an uncertainty rate of only 1.1%.
Jan. 23, 2019
Leaders in the private sector, communities, non-profits, and government are eligible to participate in the program
Jan. 21, 2019
Concentrating solar power (CSP) could play an increasingly significant role in generating electricity in the contiguous United States by 2050 if the technology's levelized cost of electricity can be lowered to goals set by the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) in 2016.
Jan. 17, 2019
A year after NREL Researcher Lance Wheeler attracted international attention for his research detailing a window that could both darken and generate electricity, he's starting over--almost from scratch.
