Time: 15:00 PM Mar 12, 2014
Location： Energy Building 1# 1st floor meeting room
Reporter: Prof. Meng Tao
Laboratory for Terawatt Photovoltaics, Arizona State University
The predicted global energy demands will reach 46 terawatts by 2100. Any renewable energy technology has to be deployed at a scale of terawatts in order to meet a noticeable portion of these demands, which requires massive amounts of natural resources. The limited supplies of these natural resources will likely prevent some renewable energy technologies from reaching terawatt scales. Take solar photovoltaics as an example. It will have to expand to a scale of tens of peak terawatts, as the time-averaged output of solar panels is ~15% of the normal wattage. Almost all of the current cell technologies suffer from natural resource limitations including source materials and electricity. In this talk, we will present a quantitative analysis on these resource limitations for solar photovoltaics under the best scenarios, i.e. the maximum possible wattage from each of the current cell technologies. Without significant technological breakthroughs, these cell technologies combined would meet only 1–2% of our energy demands in 2100. Several strategic R&D directions are identified for a sustainable photovoltaic industry.
About Reporter：
Dr. Meng Tao is a Professor in the School of Electrical, Computer and Energy Engineering at Arizona State University. He received his Ph.D. in Materials Science and Engineering from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. His career includes nine years with the State Key Lab for Silicon Materials at Zhejiang University and ten years as a professor of electrical engineering at the University of Texas at Arlington. His research covers a wide range of topics in terawatt photovoltaics, including earth-abundant active layer and transparent electrode for thin-film photovoltaics; substitution of silver electrode in silicon photovoltaics with an earth-abundant metal; energy-efficient electrorefining for solar-grade silicon and solar module recycling; high-temperature silicon power devices for renewable energy systems; and solar-powered electrochemistry as an alternative to solar energy storage. Currently he is managing four research projects for the U.S. Department of Energy and U.S. National Science Foundation, with a total budget of $2.6M. He played a critical role in the establishment of the U.S. Photovoltaic Manufacturing Consortium in Albany, New York. Since 2006 he has been the lead organizer for the Electrochemical Society symposium series on Photovoltaics for the 21st Century. His new book, “Terawatt Solar Photovoltaics: Roadblocks and Opportunities”, is published by Springer in 2014.