Lendle

This ebook provides a reproduction of the Department of Energy Basic Research Needs For Solar Energy Utilization Report. This report identifies the key scientific challenges and research directions that will enable efficient and economic use of the solar resource to provide a significant fraction of global primary energy by the mid 21st century. The report reflects the collective output of the workshop attendees, which included 200 scientists representing academia, national laboratories, and industry in the United States and abroad, and the U.S. Department of Energy’s Office of Basic Energy Sciences and Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy. Solar energy conversion systems fall into three categories according to their primary energy product: solar electricity, solar fuels, and solar thermal systems. Each of the three generic approaches to exploiting the solar resource has untapped capability well beyond its present usage. Workshop participants considered the potential of all three approaches, as well as the potential of hybrid systems that integrate key components of individual technologies into novel cross-disciplinary paradigms. Solar electricity: The challenge in converting sunlight to electricity via photovoltaic solar cells is dramatically reducing the cost/watt of delivered solar electricity — by approximately a factor of 5–10 to compete with fossil and nuclear electricity and by a factor of 25–50 to compete with primary fossil energy. New materials to efficiently absorb sunlight, new techniques to harness the full spectrum of wavelengths in solar radiation, and new approaches based on nanostructured architectures can revolutionize the technology used to produce solar electricity.
Contents include: Executive Summary; Introduction; The Workshop On Solar Energy Utilization ;Solar Energy Outlook; The Report; Global Energy Resources; Reports Of The Panels On Basic Research Needs For Solar Energy Utilization; Basic Science Challenges, Opportunities, And Research Needs In Solar Electricity; Basic Research Challenges For Solar Fuels; Basic Research Challenges For Solar Thermal Utilization; Cross-Cutting Research Challenges; Technology Assessments; Additional Reading; Acronyms And Abbreviations. Detailed contents list: Global Energy Resources; Reports of the Panels on Basic Research Needs for Solar Energy Utilization; Basic Research Challenges for Solar Electricity; Basic Research Challenges for Solar Fuels; Basic Research Challenges for Solar Thermal Utilization; Cross-cutting Research Challenges; Priority Research Directions; Revolutionary Photovoltaic Devices: 50% Efficient Solar Cells; Maximum Energy from Solar Photons at Low Cost: Designed Plastic Photovoltaic Structures; Nanostructures for Solar Energy Conversion: Low Cost and High Efficiencies; Fuels from Water and Sunlight: New Photoelectrodes for Efficient Photoelectrolysis; Leveraging Photosynthesis for Sustainable Solar Production of Biofuels; Using a Bio-inspired Smart Matrix to Optimize Energy Landscapes for Solar Fuels Production; Solar-powered Catalysts for Energy-rich Fuels Formation; Bio-inspired Molecular Assemblies for Integrating Photon-to-fuels Pathways; Achieving Defect-tolerant and Self-repairing Solar Conversion Systems; Solar Thermochemical Fuel Production; New Experimental and Theoretical Tools to Enable Transformational Research; Conversion Materials by Design; Materials Architectures for Solar Energy: Assembling Complex Structures; Technology Assessments; Solar Electricity; Solar Fuels; Solar Thermal and Thermoelectrics.

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