Stanford University Team Wins Clean Energy Prize at MIT
Thursday, May 13th 2010 10:54 PM
By GetSolar Staff.
A team of doctoral students in chemical engineering won the 2010 Massachusetts Institute of Technology Clean Energy Prize for developing a system that will increase solar panels' efficiency.
The team, which calls itself C3Nano, created a carbon-based transparent electrode that has applications in solar panels, electronic displays and thin-film transistors. Electrodes are conductors that electrical currents pass through; the C3Nano team's transparent electrode can improve solar panel efficiency by as much as 12 percent.
The technology, C3Nano founder Melburne C. LeMieux said, "not only has the potential to increase the efficiency of solar panels, it can be used in the manufacture of television, computer and cell phone touch screens and electronic displays to increase performance and lower cost."
C3Nano should have little trouble marketing its electrode technology. And transparent electrodes may have particularly useful in cloudy, cold-weather climates like Massachusetts, where wringing as much efficiency as possible from alternative-energy systems is an imperative.
The team's electrodes may lower solar panels' cost, too - a significant development for solar energy in New England, NSTAR CEO Tom May said. NSTAR, an electric utility, co-sponsored the MIT Clean Energy Prize.
"The technology developed by this team is potentially transformative in making solar energy a viable option to consumers throughout the region," May noted.
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A team of doctoral students in chemical engineering won the 2010 Massachusetts Institute of Technology Clean Energy Prize for developing a system that will increase solar panels' efficiency.
