Foundational Program to Advance Cell Efficiency (F-PACE)

The purpose of this amendment is to extend the Full Application deadline to June 30, 2011 at 11:59pm Eastern Time. All other parts of the FOA remain unchanged. The areas which have changed are highlighted within the Funding Opportunity Announcement. The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) seeks to fund applied scientific research that provides the technical foundation for significant increases in solar photovoltaic (PV) cell efficiency, to enable commercial and near-commercial PV technologies to achieve one dollar per watt installed system cost targets by the end of the decade. Combined with the technical and funding resources from the National Science Foundation (NSF), this joint Funding Opportunity Announcement (FOA) for the Foundational Program to Advance Cell Efficiency (F-PACE) will identify and fund solar device physics and photovoltaic technology research and development that will improve PV cell performance and reduce module cost for grid-scale commercial applications. Projects funded under this FOA are intended to address identified cost and efficiency barriers through advances in the PV science knowledge base, improved materials and processes for PV cell components, and innovative approaches for closing the gap b etween production cell efficiency and laboratory cell efficiency, and between laboratory cell efficiency and the theoretical maximum. These goals jointly support the missions of the DOE Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy's (EERE) Solar Energy Technologies Program (SETP) and the NSF Electrical, Communications and Cyber Systems (ECCS) Division. Through this FOA, ECCS and SETP intend to jointly pursue foundational research into PV cell and sub-cell technology to support the Sunshot initiative, which has a goal to reduce the cost of solar electricity from solar by 75 percent over the next decade to make it competitive with conventional fossil-fuel sourced generation. There will be three topics to which an application may be submitted under this FOA: Topic 1: Foundational Research on PV Sub-cell Materials and Processes Topic 2: Foundational PV Cell Research Topic 3: Barrier Focus Teams The full Funding Opportunity Announcement (FOA) is posted on the EERE eXCHANGE website at https://eere-exchange.energy.gov. Applications must be submitted through the EERE eXCHANGE website to be considered for award. The applicant must first register and create an account on the EERE eXCHANGE website. A User Guide for the EERE eXCHANGE can be found on the EERE website http://eere.energy.gov/financing/exchangeExchange/Manuals.aspx after logging in to the system. Information on where to submit questions regarding the content of the announcement and where to submit questions regarding submission of applications is found in the full FOA posted on the EERE eXCHANGE website.