The US government is offering $45 million in a new funding round to support pilot manufacturing of solar components in a bid to boost domestic manufacturing, with a special focus on dual use technologies as agrivoltaics and building integrated PV (BIPV), to be administered through the Department of Energy (DOE).

Under the funding opportunity, topic area 1 seeks to support between 5 to 12 projects to conduct pilot-scale testing and demonstration of innovative products or solutions to help increase the domestic manufacturing of silicon PV across the supply chain—from polysilicon, ingot and wafers, cells, glass, backsheets and other module components along with associated manufacturing equipment.

All these projects stand to win anywhere between $1 million to $10 million under this category.

Topic area 2 called dual-use PV incubator will develop products to create new markets for the emerging dual-use PV sectors. These include agrivoltaics, BIPV, floating PV, and vehicle-integrated PV (VIPV). Funding is being offered for this category since these markets require application-specific hardware including cells, modules, mounting and other dedicated balance-of-system (BOS) components.

These will eventually help minimize any potential land-use concerns. A total of 2 to 8 projects can secure up to $1.0 million to $1.6 million each.

The $45 million under the Investing in America Agenda, also comprises $18 million from the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law (BIL), stated the department.

DOE says the funding opportunity announced on July 6, 2023, will be open for concept paper submissions till September 27, 2023, post which full applications will be admitted till November 14, 2023. Details are available on the DOE’s website.

Since President Joe Biden took over the administration, the DOE counts 63 domestic solar supply chain manufacturing announcements having been made. More than 40 of these have been announced since August 2022 when the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) came into force (see Inflation Reduction Act 2022 Now A Law).

The US government has carved out a special role for solar PV technology in the IRA as it sees having its domestic PV manufacturing across the supply chain as bringing down the country’s reliance on foreign products for this critical clean energy source, which will also generate industrial jobs for the economy.

Last month, the DOE also launched a $36 million funding round for next generation solar technologies metal halide perovskites and cadmium telluride (CdTe) research and demonstration projects (see Fresh Funding For Advanced PV Tech).

“President Biden’s Investing in America agenda has led to a surge of solar manufacturing announcements and has created thousands of good paying, union jobs in solar deployment,” said US Secretary of Energy Jennifer M Granholm.“With these innovative, made-in-America technologies, the Biden-Harris Administration is powering the clean energy transition, lowering electricity costs for hardworking Americans, and protecting the future for our children from the impacts of the climate crisis.”