Scientists delve into solar technology challenges

Imagine that the next time your home or apartment building needs sprucing up, it could be redecorated with a paint that would harness the sun’s energy and turn it into electricity.

Though that’s not a reality yet, materials science professor Eray Aydil said it’s a viable vision — but there are discoveries that have to be made first.

And that’s the kind of research a new National Science Foundation solar energy initiative is looking to support.

It has set aside five million dollars to fund collaborative basic research aimed at making breakthroughs in solar energy use — which a Saturday workshop at the University of Minnesota began planting seeds for.

Hosted by the University’s Institute for Mathematics and its Applications , the workshop introduced a mixed audience of scientists to the challenges of developing more efficient and cost effective solar energy technology.

At the workshop, Aydil discussed the potential of the sun to be a major sustainable energy source. Covering an area the size of Texas with existing solar cells could supply the global energy demand, he said.

The trouble is that current solar technology is too expensive to compete with coal and fossil fuel.

Cost is coming down — solar-generated electricity should equal the cost of electricity from the grid by 2015 — but Arthur Nozik , Department of Energy senior research fellow, said that’s not cheap enough to quickly make the sun a major energy source.

Although there’s enough fossil fuel to last another hundred years, the need for carbon-free energy is more immediate.

“Along the current path, we won’t be generating enough carbon-free energy to meet climate-change goals,” he said.

For that, he said “we need a revolution.” Collaboration may be the key to spurring that revolution.

Addressing the audience of chemists, materials scientists and mathematicians, Henry Warchall , NSF Applied Mathematics program director, said the NSF solar energy initiative is trying to “stir the pot”.

“The idea is to mix up the community,” he said.

In science research, he added, the new ideas usually come at the boundaries of established disciplines, where the areas overlap.

NSF has always funded basic research, but now it’s starting to encourage research in areas of big need, one of which is sustainability, Warchall said.

This can be thought of as a pilot project, to see whether combining three communities that didn’t work together before can be helpful, he added.

Collaborative research isn’t unusual — more and more important problems require a multi-disciplinary approach, IMA director Fadil Santosa said.

What’s unusual about this, Aydil said, is the involvement of mathematicians.

Mathematicians are good at modeling physical processes, Warchall said, and it’s good to bring in people from varying fields to solve a problem.

Alex Marker , a research fellow at Schott North America , which produces solar technologies, was one of a small minority of industry researchers at Saturday’s workshop.

The Solar Energy Industries Association aims to make solar energy the source of 12 percent of the country’s electricity demand by 2020, a goal Marker said is reasonable.

Increased use of solar technology is inevitable, but a breakthrough might make it faster, he said.

Though the industry is working hard to make small improvements to existing technology, he said, “It’s nice to see the NSF putting some money into idea generation.”