Your daily dose of photovoltaic technology developments and solar news

Magnolia Solar has received a US$1 million award from the New York State Energy Research and Development Authority (NYSERDA). This award is to develop advanced thin-film solar cells in partnership with the College of Nanoscale Science and Engineering (CNSE) of the University at Albany.

A program that started at the beginning of the year and headed by Energy Research Centre of the Netherlands (ECN), hopes to develop a new amorphous and microcrystalline silicon thin film cell using plastics as the substrate foil. The three-year ‘Silicon-Light’ programme is subsidized by the European Commission in the framework of the thematic research programme Energy in FP7. The R&D consortium includes EPFL, University of Copenhagen, University of Valencia, JiaoTong University of Shanghai, Umicore and VHF Technologies (Flexcell), the hopeful commercial end-user of the programme. Flexcell is a subsidiary of Q-Cells.

Prism Solar and PPG Industries have joined forces to test the performance of different types of glass in both standard and holographic photovoltaic modules at various incident and direct angles. The companies say that the tests will compare PPG’s Solarphire antireflective high-transmissive glass to patterned glass to ascertain the increase in energy yield.

U.S. Patent number 7,585,349 has been assigned to the University of Washington, covering an invention by Younan Xia and Yougang Sun, which has been licensed exclusively to Cambrios in its specific field of use.

Bloo Solar has selected SVTC as the development and commercialization partner for its third-generation, three-dimensional architecture, thin-film photovoltaic module. The startup company (formerly known as Q1 NanoSystems) said it has started its "Solar Brush" wafer development production run at SVTC's facilities, and plans to enter the market with initial commercial modules in early 2012.

New Energy Technologies has reached the next development stage of a process for spraying solar cells and their related components onto glass. This product is still awaiting patent and is in the early stages, yet if successful, is expected to make significant changes to the BIPV market.

AccuStrata, based in the University of Maryland's Technology Advancement Program incubator, just won a $150,000, phase-one Department of Energy Small Business Innovation Research grant, its third in six months. The company will use the grant to refine its field-tested, patent-protected system for real-time monitoring of the effectiveness of thin-film solar panel production, enabling manufacturers to make on-the-fly changes and ensure panels' efficiency.