SunShot takes aim at PV costs

ON 4 February U.S. Secretary of Energy Steven Chu introduced the SunShot program, which is now the cover program for the Dollar-per-Watt (US$1/W) initiative (see Mar/Apr 2011, pp 52). Chu hopes the SunShot program will help restore innovation and reestablish US leadership in the solar industry: “We effectively want to bring down the cost of large-scale installations to a dollar-per-watt, which would correspond roughly to about 6 cents per kilowatt hour for general electricity.”