Bringing Order to Solar's Wild West

Solar power has been around for decades so I was surprised to discover that the industry lacks some standards. If the solar industry is still a Wild West, the National Renewable Energy Laboratory might just be the straight-shooting sheriff.

NREL, funded by the U.S. Department of Energy, is on the outskirts of Golden, Colorado, near the School of Mines and the Coors brewery. Joe Verrengia from the lab's public affairs office showed me around campus, where my rented Prius was far from the only one in the parking lot. We donned protective glasses and entered the bright and shiny Process Development and Integration Laboratory (photo, right), where NREL scientists are developing standards for research, processing, and material handling in collaboration with solar tech companies.

This isn't a factory, but the research here aims to make commercial production easier and more cost-effective. The scientists do test runs on different kinds of thin-film photovoltaic cells, working on the best ways to apply semiconducting layers. The samples are small enough to handle but large enough to scale up later. Verrengia showed me a brand new machine being used in partnership with HelioVolt, a company in Austin that is coming up with ways to coat construction materials with photovoltaics.

So far, one of NREL's biggest solar success stories is First Solar, a billion-dollar thin-film solar tech company based in Tempe, Arizona. The lab helped incubate the company in the 1990s and they've continued to collaborate.

"Why don't companies test this stuff out at their facilities?" I asked Verrengia.

"They can't afford it," he replied. Sort of like me--renting a Prius instead of buying one. After the lab, we went outside to see a Prius that NREL had bought and completely reconfigured. It had a thin solar panel affixed to the roof and was plugged into the base of a solar array to recharge. I wanted to do a switcheroo with my rental, but I'm no Jesse James.

Photos: NREL's Process Development and Integration Laboratory in Golden, Colorado. Credit: Alyssa Danigelis.