Friday Focus: How Texas’ new solar institute is planning to take on the world
- Texas A&M's Center for Solar Energy is setting out to become the world's largest solar research centre.
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CSE is aiming to help the US become a world leader in solar.
Blogger
Lucy Woods
As the US jumps full bound into dominating solar and international solar companies look for a slice of the action, a flurry of recent announcements suggests the country is also looking to take a lead in the sphere of solar research and academia.
Earlier this month, Texas A&M University revealed grand plans for what it said would be the “world’s largest” solar research institute in the form of the US$600 million Center for Solar Energy (CSE). And hot on its heels, State University New York (SUNY) said it was planning to open a US$100 million new PV manufacturing and development research centre in New York this year.
CSE’s ambitions as the answer to the US solar industry’s problems are indeed impressive. Its promotional video unleashes a barrage of catastrophic facts: the US controlling just 7% of the world solar market when in 1995 it controlled 50%; 90% of solar products coming from outside the US; 2,000 jobs lost; the world spending 500 times more on solar than the US. Will the US be left behind, it asks, or will it regain its “rightful place through innovation and leadership?”
Urgent and inspiring quotes from prominent economists and business leaders make the message clear: America must win the international solar leadership battle, as “the country that can answer the [solar] call will be the force to be reckoned with”.The CSE video questions: “Will we rise to the occasion?” CSE “can and will answer that call,” comes the response.
In short, CSE is shooting for nothing short of being the school for solar, offering the biggest and best of everything: the largest pure solar PV research facility in the world; the only utility-scale test site in the world; the largest exclusively solar PV innovation lab globally; the most technologies deployed anywhere. Alongside all of this, CSE pledges to generate 100% of the campus’ energy from its own 50MW plant.
The US$600 million venture is being majority funded by “venture philanthropy” and government bursaries; it has already secured its first venture partner, but is far from fully funded. CSE subsequently welcomes conversations with technologies corporate groups, other institutions, and venture capitalists and of course philanthropists.
Money aside, CSE’s primary focus will be on education, then job creation with career training, engineering research specialities including cell architecture, optics, ion implantation, 3D printing and advanced manufacturing methods among others.
But with an impressive list of international solar institutes already established across the globe, will CSE ever be able to live up to its grand ambitions?
Mark Thirsk, managing partner at Linx Consulting for electric materials, believes CSE will still find it hard to overtake other established centres such as America’s National Renewable Energy Laboratory, or Germany’s Fraunhofer Institute to become a global leaders.
But he commends CSE’s focus on next-generation research technologies and predicts CSE may “help tip solar installations into becoming sure-fire money makers eventually, but those gains remain a few years away”.
And what about the cost? Fraunhofer’s expenditure over four years was less than half, at approximately US$270 million, while NREL’s expenditure in 2009 was US$316 million.
“The headline number is impressive, but it sounds as if some of the money will be invested in a ground-based array rather than in research,” concludes Thirsk.
Raju Yenamandra, vice president of business development at manufacturer SolarWorld USA, reckons only 25% of the US$600 million figure will be spent on the in-house array, but admits the “devil is in the detail” as announcements so far are not detailed enough for a full insight. Yenamandra doesn’t imagine CSE will be frivolous with its budget though, as it won’t want to be “pounced” on by critics if seen to be splashing money around.
Yenamandra mainly sings CSE’s praise for bringing practical solar to academia, offering a side-by-side comparison for installation approaches. And he predicts that if the institute can make enough money from its 50MW solar plant, it will be able to fulfil its ambitions. CSE plans to sell spare electricity from the plant to the national grid to provide Texans outside the campus walls with clean, green, cheap energy.
For America as a whole Yenamandra thinks CSE will help promote and advertise solar to the general public, as the “population is more likely to embrace solar if it is from a university”. CSE plans to provide independent verifications and breakdowns of solar products to make it clear what has been proven and what is viable in solar energy.
But what seems to define Texas A&M from other universities is its sheer boldness, says Yenamandra. Where other universities he believes are shy and purely technology and theory focused, CSE will be actively applying and installing (and gaining grants and credibility on the way).
Which is good news for graduates – Yenamandra confirms Solarworld USA would value CSE graduates as having an “edge” over others for practical work experience in the solar field, and would hope training times could therefore be minimised, accelerating solar advancement as a whole.
CSE will also run a solar entrepreneurship programme lasting two years aimed at amateurs and established solar professionals. Students are promised the chance to work with cutting edge technology teams and to learn how to start and run a global solar company.
There are also ten scholarships offered per company, with participants given the chance to live in CSE, refine their technology, train in solar business, acquire additional talent and hit the ground at a full run ready for an advanced venture capital investment - leaving the inventors and entrepreneurs in charge of their company, and the technology.
As for CSE’s ambition of America becoming a world leader in solar again, Yenamandra doesn’t think CSE will help it to overtake China in terms of solar production.
But with such bold ambitions, it is hard not to be won over by CSE’s vision of becoming the biggest and best solar research institute in the world.
At least for now anyway.
