Engineers at Washington University will work on low-cost solar cells and systems, while other partners will be deploying the technology in India.
According to Pratim Biswas, PhD, chair of the Department of Energy, Environmental & Chemical Engineering in the School of Engineering & Applied Science at Washington University in St. Louis and director of the McDonnell Academy Global Energy and Environmental Partnership (MAGEEP), the idea behind a recently announced U.S.-India consortium in solar energy is that India might be able to leapfrog energy production technology, moving directly to solar in areas of the country that have never been electrified.
WUSTL and its McDonnell Academy partner the Indian Institute of Technology, Bombay (IIT-Bombay), together with corporate partners, such as the St. Louis-based solar company MEMC Electronic Materials, Inc. (MEMC), will play key roles in the effort to define and invent solar technologies that might make this leap possible.