Solar photovoltaic technologies convert solar energy into useful energy forms by directly absorbing solar photons and either converting part of the energy to electricity or storing part of the energy in a chemical reaction. Solar photovoltaic technologies produce clean power from domestic renewable energy, provide a source of reliable solar power, are more easily built than conventional power plants, and boost the national economy by creating new solar companies and jobs of the future.
PVMC has chosen a trio of leading solar industry executives with guiding the development of the first-ever U.S. CIGS PV Roadmap. These co-chairs will direct the activities and decisions of the Roadmap Executive Steering Committee (RESC) and guide roadmap working groups addressing six focus areas relevant to the entire industry, including roll-to-roll; rigid glass; metrology; modules and packaging; substrates and materials; and reliability, certification, and test.
The co-chairs are:
Dr. Larry Kazmerski, Director of the National Center for Photovoltaics at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL), has led NREL efforts in measurements and characterization for more than 20 years. Kazmerski has published more than 310 journal papers in the areas of solar cells, thin films, semiconductor materi als and devices, surface and interface analysis, scanning probe microscopy, nanoscale technology, high-tempera ture superconductivity, and semicon ductor defects, and is a three-time recipient of the R&D 100 awards for novel mea surement and characterization de vices.
Dr. Joseph Laia, who most recently served as President and Chief Executive Officer of Miasole. Prior to Miasole, he was Group Vice President of Metrology at KLA-Tencor, responsible for all of KLA's eight wafer metrology businesses, and served as Chief Executive Officer of Blue29 LLC, a subsidiary of KLA Tencor Corp. He has over a decade of national laboratory experience and spent a number of years in semiconductor capital equipment companies. He holds 10 patents, has published 25 papers, and has edited one book in the area of materials processing.
Dr. Richard Swanson, who founded SunPower Corporation to develop and commercialize cost-effective photovoltaic power systems in 1991, and currently serves as its president emeritus. Along with his students and co-workers, Swanson has published more than 200 articles in journals and conference proceedings, as well as several book chapters. In 2002, Swanson received the William R. Cherry award by the IEEE for outstanding contributions to the photovoltaic field, and was elected to the National Academy of Engineering in 2009. Most recently, Swanson received the Economist’s Innovation Award for Energy and Environment, the 2010 IEEE Jun-ichi Nishizawa Medal, and the Karl Boer Solar Energy Medal of Merit.