SEARCH · Search NASA

Results for “Solar Aspect”

Search indexed NASA NTRS and DOE OSTI research on propulsion, heat transfer, battery materials and energy systems. Follow report and document links to the original sources.

SourceResearch connectionFrom yearThrough year

Quote a phrase for an exact phrase match. Source license links do not imply unrestricted reuse.

At least 19 records

All sources NASA NTRS DOE OSTI

DOE OSTI2019

Real-time estimation of solar irradiation

Aspects relate to methods, systems, and computer program products for estimating future levels of solar power received at a sensor including receiving, by a processor, a first measured power value at a first time from the sensor, calculating a first value of a dynamic correction factor based on the first measured power value associated with the first time, applying the first value of the calculated dynamic correction factor to a power estimation model, generating a first power estimation value for a second time using the power estimation model, wherein the second time is later than the first time, receiving a second measured power value at the second time, and calculating a second value of a dynamic correction factor based on the second measured power value associated with the second time and the first value of the dynamic correction factor.

Dang, Hien P.↗

DOE OSTI2019

Graded bandgap perovskite solar cell

This disclosure provides systems, methods, and apparatus related to solar cells. In one aspect a solar cell includes a first electrode, a hole transport layer disposed on the first electrode, a first perovskite layer disposed on the hole transport layer, a cationic diffusion barrier disposed on the first perovskite layer, a second perovskite layer disposed on the cationic diffusion barrier, an electron transport layer disposed on the second perovskite layer, and a second electrode disposed on the electron transport layer. The first perovskite layer comprises a different perovskite than the second perovskite layer.

14 SOLAR ENERGY↗

DOE OSTI2019

Structural frame and solar collector module

Solar collector modules and techniques for their construction are disclosed. In one aspect, a solar collector module includes a reflector and a three-dimensional structural frame that supports the reflector. The structural frame includes a set of primary structural shapes and a set of axial frame members connected between corners of the primary structural shapes forming helical paths for the transmission of torque from one end of the structural frame to the other. In another aspect, a method for assembling a solar collector module includes pre-assembling part of the module.

Eisinger, Joseph↗

DOE OSTI2021

Consensus International Solar Resource Standards and Best Practices Development

Standardization and best practices of data sets and models enable the industry to develop widely accepted protocols adapted to various stages of solar project development and operations. In collaboration with the International Energy Agency Photovoltaic Power Systems Programme Task 16, the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) developed and regularly updates the Best Practices Handbook for the Collection and Use of Solar Resource Data for Solar Energy Applications. In collaboration with ASTM's radiometry subcommittee, NREL leads the development of various radiometric standards. These contribute to increased accuracy in the measurement of the solar resource available to conversion systems and boost the development and improvement of radiative models. These models can then provide the long-term geographic or climatic distribution of solar radiation for areas where measured solar data are not available. Further, these standards play a preeminent role in all aspects of solar energy projects, including standard conditions, methods and instrumentation, accelerated testing, and service lifetime of materials.

ASTM↗

DOE OSTI2020

Consensus International Solar Resource Standards and Best Practices Development: Preprint

Standardization and best practices of data sets and models enable the industry to develop widely accepted protocols for various stages of solar project development and operations. In collaboration with the International Energy Agency Photovoltaic Power Systems Programme Task 16, the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) developed and regularly updates the Best Practices Handbook for the Collection and Use of Solar Resource Data for Solar Energy Applications. In collaboration with ASTM members on the radiometry subcommittee, NREL assists in and leads the development of radiometric standards that contribute to increased accuracy in the measurement of solar resources available to conversion systems and to the development and improvement of models. These models can then provide long-term geographic distribution of solar resources for areas where measured solar data are not available. Further, these standards play a preeminent role in all aspects of solar energy projects, including standard conditions, methods and instrumentation, accelerated testing, and service lifetime of materials.

41 EE - Solar Energy Technologies Office (EE-4S)↗

DOE OSTI2021

Advancing Solar Innovation for Low and Moderate-Income Households (Final Technical Report)

The overarching goal of this project was to deepen the understanding of the social and economic aspects of solar adoption, with a specific eye towards any pathways or barriers that could be identified that directly impact low and moderate-income households. Specific objectives included (1) identifying and assessing significant non-economic barriers that complicate the ability of LMI households to adopt and benefit from solar, even under scenarios with low economic barriers; (2) assessing the differential ability of groups to benefit from solar adoption based on their ability to invest in different solar innovations; (3) explaining why some LMI communities nonetheless experience significantly higher rates of solar adoption and benefit than others; (4) developing a methodological model for generating data addressing key issues to the project; and (5) designing and developing an interactive web portal that aggregates existing datasets, provides researchers trend analysis capabilities, standardizes project protocols for other states and communities; provides the opportunities for researchers using the same protocol in other communities to upload their results; and engages with the general public by providing them the ability to upload their own perspectives and stories of solar technology adoption. Through a common framework for conducting semi-structured field interviews. In partnership with cooperative extension services, in conjunction with survey research and the aggregation of existing solar adoption datasets, this study has identified that currently ,there is a strong values alignment and knowledge access challenge that continues to affect solar adoption. Participants in this study – many of whom are either low or moderate-income and/or live in underserved rural communities do not believe solar is an option where they live or believe solar is appropriate for their lifestyle. This perception challenge is further exacerbated by the absolute dearth of adopters in most communities and a total lack of local marketing for solar energy. What marketing that does exist is geared towards audiences other than those in the participant's community, reinforcing a perception that 22% of survey respondents (n = 1,551) have: that solar energy is not meant for them and their community. Overcoming these serious human challenges pertaining to knowledge and marketing are critical to reducing the customer acquisition costs incurred amongst LMI communities and especially those in rural America where the opportunities solar provides to increase local energy resilience, security, all while engaging in personal stewardship of the planet could align with local values. Community-Based Social Marketing, built in partnership with community leaders and geared towards meeting local visions of ideal life, is a near term opportunity to bridge the gap between local priorities and national market and policy imperatives for solar while moving towards the administration's goals for renewable energy as part of a just and equitable decarbonization program. The tools and methods developed for this study can serve as a template for identifying other specific local challenges for solar adoption in other state, and provide the opportunity for a common data framework for understanding system-wide trends and barriers to achieving uptake of residential solar in communities that may, ultimately, benefit the most from the technology.

14 SOLAR ENERGY↗

DOE OSTI2019

Solar soft cost ontology for multi-stakeholder knowledge base

Introduction: Solar soft costs can account for 60% of the cost of an installed solar system, thus cost reductions for solar hinge on reducing soft costs. Soft costs are most frequently defined as non-hardware costs. Defining something by what it isn’t makes it inherently difficult to identify what exactly it is, which in turn makes it difficult to study. Our goal is to develop an ontology that identifies 1) a consistent and defined soft cost vocabulary, 2) who creates, shares and acquires soft cost knowledge, and 3) the learning processes used to facilitate knowledge flows. Ultimately, identifying these aspects of solar soft costs will provide a pathway for public policy and market interventions to reduce soft costs. Methods: To build the solar soft cost ontology (SSCO) we built a corpus of solar soft cost literature (through keyword search), then coded the corpus for all concepts related to or influencing costs, barriers, or time. Finally, we organized the concepts into taxonomies, including soft costs and network actors, and developed the properties (i.e., attributes and relationships) that link the concepts. In phase two, we will code a set of solar installer case studies and complimentary solar sector (e.g., distributors, software providers, trade organizations) firm case studies to update the SSCO, documenting changes and additions resulting from the use of practitioner feedback. Results and Discussion: The resulting SSCO includes concepts, attributes, and relationships that provide a rich and deep knowledge base that merges academic and practitioner expertise to create a shared and exhaustive vocabulary related to soft costs, a network of actors that impact those soft costs, and the attributes and relationships that connect them. The applications of the SSCO extend to a diverse group of stakeholders, including researchers, policy makers, and practitioners, engaged in reducing solar soft costs.

29 ENERGY PLANNING, POLICY, AND ECONOMY↗

DOE OSTI2019

Surface albedo and reflectance: Review of definitions, angular and spectral effects, and intercomparison of major data sources in support of advanced solar irradiance modeling over the Americas

This study defines albedo and reflectance in the context of solar applications. It examines the main sources of surface albedo data that can be used to help solar irradiance modeling efforts, such as undertaken by the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) over the Americas, for instance, per the National Solar Radiation Database (NSRDB). The MODIS-based albedo database, as used as input to derive historical time series of solar irradiance in the current version of the NSRDB, is compared to other sources of global gridded data over the Americas in general and some specific areas in particular. The particular role of snow cover is analyzed. It is found that, in the current MODIS-based NSRDB implementation, snow-impacted areas have been assigned a too high albedo in general because of the lack of consideration for the antagonistic effect of surface roughness, among other factors. Other albedo databases, such as CMSAF, MINES-ParisTech or the ERA5 reanalysis, do not display such high albedos at latitudes above ~40 degrees N. The gap-free and snow-free MODIS MCD43GF product is found affected by a long-term downward trend over some areas and out-of-phase seasonal effects over other areas, in comparison with MERRA-2 reanalysis data in particular. Comparisons with actual albedo measurements at the arid Desert Rock site in Nevada also show that albedo data derived from land surface models are affected by systematic bias. Five albedo databases are intercompared for the area around Ivanpah Playa, California, which has great importance in both remote sensing and solar applications. Various aspects of the proper usage of albedo data in solar radiation modeling are discussed, regarding calculations of both the backscattering process and reflections on a tilted surface: spatial resolution, temporal resolution, angular effects, and spectral effects. An important distinction is made between the use of albedo data at ~4 km resolution for backscattering calculations and at ~10 m resolution for transposition calculations to tilted planes, which might additionally require spectral information for monofacial or bifacial PV applications. It is shown that the tilted calculations usually performed in solar resource assessments are far from realistic in the case of most large-scale PV applications, for which a more suitable methodological approach is described. For such needs, the limitations of the current sources of high-resolution reflectance data are discussed. The impact of surface albedo estimation errors on the estimation of backscattered irradiance over snowy areas is evaluated. It is found non-negligible, and even large under cloudy conditions.

14 SOLAR ENERGY↗

DOE OSTI2021

Infrared transmissive concentrated photovoltaics for coupling solar electric energy conversion to solar thermal energy utilization

The use of photovoltaic (PV) cells to convert solar energy to electricity is becoming increasingly prevalent; however, there are still significant limitations associated with the widespread adoption of PV cells for electricity needs. There is a clear need for a high efficiency solar power system that supplies electricity at a competitive cost and that provides for an on-demand supply of electricity as well as energy storage. By combining aspects of concentrated solar power and concentrated photovoltaics, the present invention provides a device that enables the conversion of sunlight to electricity at very high efficiencies and that enables the transmission of thermal energy to heat storage devices for later use. The disclosed device enables transmissive CPV through the use of a multijunction PV cell mounted on a transparent base. The use of a multijunction cell allows for highly efficient absorption of light above the bandgap of the lowest bandgap subcell. The transparent base permits transmission of a high percentage of the remaining light below the bandgap of the lowest bandgap subcell. The present invention also discloses a method of generating electricity through the use of a transmissive CPV device. Sunlight is concentrated onto one or more surfaces of the device. High energy light is absorbed by a multijunction PV cell and converted directly to electricity, while low energy light is transmitted through the device into a thermal storage device, which may then be coupled to a heat engine to generate dispatchable electricity.

Escarra, Matthew David↗

DOE OSTI2020

Method and apparatus of fabricating a solar cell device

Solar cell devices as well as method and apparatus for producing solar cell devices are disclosed. Aspects of the disclosure provide a solar cell device that includes a string of solar cells. The string of solar cells are conductively connected in series and arranged in a shingled manner with sides of adjacent solar cells being overlapped. A first metal ribbon segment is conductively bonded to a front surface of an end cell, the front surface being configured to face a light incoming direction to receive energy from a light source.

Caswell, Nathaniel Alexis↗

DOE OSTI2023

Method and apparatus of fabricating a solar cell device

Caswell, Nathaniel↗

DOE OSTI2024

Incentivizing and Supporting Early-Stage Solar Innovation in the United States

In 2018, the U.S. Department of Energy's Solar Energy Technologies Office and the National Renewable Energy Laboratory set out to develop a repeatable, predictable prize model (the American-Made Challenges) and an entrepreneurial innovation network (the American-Made Network) to support participants along their innovation journeys. This began with the launch of the Solar Prize. Five years and six rounds later, the Solar Prize is the longest-standing competition of the American-Made Challenges. It has awarded $\$20.1$ million in cash prizes and $\$5.5$ million in technical support vouchers to 140 teams across all aspects of the solar industry. By sharing the outputs of the prize, we hope that our lessons learned will help continue to build the clean tech entrepreneurship support ecosystem.

14 SOLAR ENERGY↗

DOE OSTI2019

Oxidative Segregation of Group V Dopants in CdTe Solar Cells

Unless the scientific understanding and engineering of CdTe solar cell interfaces improve, the potential efficiency gains from improving the absorber lifetime and hole density will not be realized. We use thermomechanical cleaving, a new method of cleanly exposing interfaces, in conjunction with surface analysis methods to elucidate new aspects of CdTe solar cell structure and function. Liquid nitrogen-based thermomechanical, planar cleaving of devices and test structures in a glove box connected to a cluster tool allows surface spectroscopy of buried interfaces without contamination, oxidation, or perturbation of chemical environment.

14 SOLAR ENERGY↗

DOE OSTI2021

Graphic layers and related methods for incorporation of graphic layers into solar modules

In some aspects, graphic layers for depicting a visible representation of an image along a surface of a photovoltaic module can include a plurality of substantially opaque isolated regions; and at least one substantially transparent contiguous region surrounding the substantially opaque isolated regions, wherein an outer surface of the at least one substantially transparent contiguous region comprises a matte surface finish.

Occidentale, Anthony John↗

DOE OSTI2021

Synthesis and Photophysical Properties of Light-Harvesting Gold Nanoclusters Fully Functionalized with Antenna Chromophores

The development of efficient light-harvesting systems is important to understand the key aspects of solar-energy conversion processes and to utilize them in various photonic applications. In this study, atomically well-defined gold nanoclusters are reported as a new platform to fabricate artificial light-harvesting systems. An efficient amide coupling method is developed to synthesize water-soluble Au 22 clusters fully protected with pyrene chromophores by taking advantage of their facile phase-transfer reaction. The synthesized Au 22 clusters with densely packed 18 pyrene chromophores (Au 22 –PyB 18 ) exhibit triple-emission in blue, green, and red wavelength regions arising respectively from pyrene monomer, pyrene excimer, and Au 22 emission, producing bright white light emission together. The photoluminescence of Au 22 is enhanced by more than tenfold, demonstrating that pyrenes at the periphery efficiently channel the absorbed energy to the luminescent Au 22 at the center. A combination of femtosecond transient absorption and anisotropy measurements of Au 22 –PyB 18 explicitly reveals three main decay components of 220 fs, 3.5 ps, and 160 ps that can be assigned to energy migration between pyrenes and energy transfer processes from pyrene monomer and excimer to the central Au 22 , respectively.

14 SOLAR ENERGY↗

DOE OSTI2020

High work function MoO2 back contacts for improved solar cell performance

Improved high work function back contacts for solar cells are provided. In one aspect, a method of forming a solar cell includes: forming a completed solar cell having a substrate coated with an electrically conductive material, an absorber disposed on the electrically conductive material, a buffer layer disposed on the absorber, a transparent front contact disposed on the buffer layer, and a metal grid disposed on the transparent front contact; removing the substrate and the electrically conductive material using exfoliation, exposing a backside surface of the solar cell; depositing a high work function material onto the back side surface of the solar cell; and depositing a back contact onto the high work function material. A solar cell formed by the present techniques is also provided. Yield of the exfoliated device can be improved by removing bubbles from adhesive used for exfoliation and/or forming contact pads to access the metal grid.

14 SOLAR ENERGY↗

DOE OSTI2021

High work function MoO2 back contacts for improved solar cell performance

Antunez, Priscilla D.↗

DOE OSTI2025

Utility-Scale Operational Consequences for Solar Grid Services

This report delves into the critical aspects of grid services provided by solar inverter-based resources (IBRs), with an emphasis on the evolving landscape of microgrids, virtual power plants (VPPs), aggregators, and distributed energy resource management systems (DERMS). As the energy sector undergoes a transformative shift towards more decentralized and resilient grid architectures, understanding the multifaceted risks associated with these technologies becomes paramount. The report categorizes these risks into organizational, technical, and procedural domains, providing a thorough risk assessment framework that stakeholders can utilize to anticipate and mitigate potential issues. In addressing the increasing complexity of grid interconnections, the report highlights the importance of Cyber-Informed Engineering (CIE). By embedding engineering controls and cybersecurity measures into the early stages of system design, this approach aims to fortify grid infrastructure against emerging cyber threats. The analysis includes an exploration of best practices and strategies for integrating CIE principles to enhance grid security and resilience. To provide practical insights, the report conducts a detailed consequence analysis of various grid services and cyber mitigations that can be applied through the interconnection process. This analysis evaluates the potential impacts of different failure modes and vulnerabilities, offering a clear understanding of the consequences that could arise from disruptions within the energy grid. The findings are further enriched by a series of case studies that illustrate real-world scenarios and lessons learned from past incidents. Through this comprehensive examination of grid services and their criticality, the report aims to prepare industry professionals with the knowledge and tools necessary to navigate the complexities of modern energy systems. By providing a comprehensive approach that includes risk assessment, cybersecurity, and consequence analysis, solar stakeholders can more effectively guarantee the reliability, efficiency, and security of the energy grid.

14 SOLAR ENERGY↗