Sustainable energy and terawatt-scale photovoltaics

This MIT Energy Initiative on the Road event opens with a brief overview of the MIT Energy Initiative (MITEI) by Daniel Enderton, executive director of MITEI's Sustainable Energy Revolution Program (SERP). This overview will highlight the extensive depth and breadth of research, education, campus energy and outreach activities underway as part of the Initiative. Enderton gives particular focus on the SERP program, with highlights of successful past projects in storage, promising new projects in geothermal and the impact philanthropy is having on renewable energy research at MIT.

Following this, mechanical engineering professor Tonio Buonassisi gives a presentation describing the key technical challenges to scaling commercial PV technologies to the terawatt level. The speaker presents a vision for the role of university engineering and science toward surmounting these challenges, drawing from personal experience in the solar industry, national laboratories and academia. Increased solar cell conversion efficiencies, novel materials, and decreased capital equipment costs will be discussed as a means to achieve rapidly scalable manufacturing, highlighting the role of innovation technologies and how they will help drive down the cost of solar technology to be competitive with petroleum-based alternatives, while Enderton gives an overview of the MIT Energy Initiative (MITEI) and information on other renewable energy projects at MIT.

Access this 1-hour, 10-minute video program by clicking on the link below.