Tuesday, October 13, 2009

Fraunhofer CSE opens Cambridge PV module lab

By Mass High Tech staff

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Fraunhofer USA Inc. officially opened its Center for Sustainable Energy (CSE) Systems, a photovoltaic module innovation laboratory, in Cambridge today. The MIT Energy Initiative and the Massachusetts Technology Collaborative first announced news of the facility in April of 2008.

The launch of the laboratory was celebrated today with a ribbon cutting ceremony involving Ian Bowles, Massachusetts secretary of energy, and German Ambassador Klaus Scharioth.

The laboratory will host research, development, testing and evaluation of materials and processes associated with PV solar modules. A second facility, with both indoor and outdoor testing capability, is also in progress to enable development of residential energy management, photovoltaics for buildings and energy retrofits. The goal of the center is to develop more affordable PV modules for more widespread use.

Fraunhofer CSE is being financed by the Massachusetts Clean Energy Center, National Grid and anonymous private donors in the U.S., as well as the German Federal Government’s Ministry for Education and Research and the Fraunhofer Institute for Solar Energy Systems. In April 2008, Mass High Tech reported that the Massachusetts Technology Collaborative (MTC) has allocated $5 million to fund the startup of the institute.

The Cambridge laboratory is one of Fraunhofer USA’s six research laboratories. At the time of the initial announcement in 2008, the Fraunhofer CSE was speculated to bring in about 60 jobs initially.

Fraunhofer USA is a wholly owned subsidiary of Fraunhofer-Gesellschaft, a European research agency that is partially funded by the German government. Fraunhofer-Gesellschaft maintains more than 80 research units at more than 40 different locations throughout Germany, and a staff of some 12,700 scientists and engineers working on a variety of technologies, from solar power to lasers.