The U.S. Department of Energy’s SunShot Initiative recently awarded $25 million to a joint research effort by Stanford and UC-Berkeley. The team, called the Bay Area Photovoltaics Consortium (BAPVC), will work to address technical barriers to the solar power industry and reduce the cost of solar installations.

BAPVC will fund research and development that aims to produce cost-effective solar modules in high volume. It will look closely at new materials, device structures and production methods.

BAPVC co-director Yi Cui, an associate professor of materials science and engineering, was optimistic about these efforts.

“The future of solar is clearly in cheaper, better performing photovoltaics,” Cui said to the Stanford News Service. “The SunShot funding and the exciting collaborative approach between the universities and national labs guided by industrial perspectives will advance all the components of solar modules that will bring down the dollar-per-watt cost dramatically.”

— An Le Nguyen