Research – Thermophotovoltaic Technology.

National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) has partnered with Antora Energy and theMassachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) over the past three years to engage in two separate projects in thermophotovoltaic (TPV) technology.

TPV captures the energy radiated as infrared light from hot objects and converts that radiation to electricity at high efficiency using specially designed photovoltaic cells. TPV technology is not a new discovery. During the 1990s, NREL conducted TPV research led by now-retired scientists Tim Coutts and Mark Wanlass. The research was funded by the US Navy in search of an alternative heat source for military applications.

Now, this technology is making a return. NREL has a long history of developing record-efficiency photovoltaic devices that shape commercial applications. When collaborating with NREL, partners work with researchers who have designed record-setting and award-winning photovoltaic technologies such as solar cells and TPV cells, including rapid manufacturing with photolithographic processing and multiple vapor-phase epitaxy techniques.

TPV has the ability to grow into a solution for devices and systems for a range of high-impact applications where the robustness provided by the absence of moving parts is crucial. NREL is comprehensively situated to advance TPV technology with breakthrough potential. To reach this potential, NREL is helping partners to move their ideas to market and reach benchmarks for performance and efficiency. Both the Antora Energy and MIT projects have led to record efficiencies of more than 35% – a very competitive level of performance.

Not only does NREL’s team have the capacity to demonstrate record efficiencies, but it can also model, test, simulate, and integrate experiments with real power hardware to develop methods for real-time co-optimisation with the grid. In NREL’s Energy Systems Integration Facility, the systems integration infrastructure allows the study of technological performance within larger systems. By using models and analytical resources to study the supply chain, electricity costs, and future market deployment of TPV devices, NREL helps partners foresee the impact of new products in a range of techno-economic scenarios.

NREL scientists partnering with Antora Energy and MIT on TPV projects