CAREER: CAS-Climate: Sustainable Design Principles for Emerging Photovoltaics

The overarching goal of this project is to identify the most environmentally sustainable and economically feasible schemes to prepare emerging photovoltaic (EPV) technologies for the energy market as truly sustainable solar technology. This goal will be pursued by synergistically integrating research and education-associated tasks within three objectives: (1) identifying sustainable design principles for EPVs based on circular end-of-life (EoL) options and advancing sustainability education with EoL-related concepts; (2) analyzing the use and EoL phase-related environmental impacts and cost dimension of EPVs and advancing solar energy education in higher education in South Dakota, and; (3) assessing enviro-economic models for novel application of EPVs, creating decision support tools (EPV-Life tool), and disseminating the research results by offering workshops. Considering that EPVs can create an important market for the solar energy industry, enviro-economic models of EPVs and their novel applications are essential to inform PV stakeholders regarding the pathways for environmentally, economically, and socially sustainable solar energy. As a result, the societal benefits of this project include methods for offsetting greenhouse gases and facilitating an effective education mechanism for EPVs technology. The investigator will design the EPV architectures following refurbish, remanufacture, and recycle (triple-r) principles while this technology is still partially in the R&D stage. The focal point of design for triple-r is to determine device architecture that allows environmentally friendly and economically feasible EoL management schemes. The investigator will assess the life cycle toxic impacts from the use and EoL phase of EPVs due to a catastrophic event and/or breakage or improper disposal. As a result, the use phase-related environmental impacts of PV projects installed on paved (i.e., rooftops) and unpaved (i.e., ground-mounted) surfaces and long-term impacts related to improper dumping will be better understood, and strategies to prevent these from happening can be formulated. The investigator will design all processes involved in the entire life cycle of EPVs using the levelized cost of electricity (LCOE) metric, with explicit focus on assessing the net cost of triple-r options that minimize the net cost of electricity from EPVs. Integration of EoL to the LCOE metric will allow for comprehensive development of EPVs with a closed-loop approach. All processes involved in the entire life cycle of EPVs and their novel application fields will be designed using enviro-economic tradeoffs analyzed in this project. A primary focus will be on assessing bifacial systems used in urban/ sub-urban deployment and EPV coupled battery systems in rural/remote applications. The research and educational goals of this project are integrated by focusing on five broader impacts activities: 1) Training graduate and undergraduate students, 2) working closely with Youth & Family Services to outreach to K-12 students, including minority students from the underserved, economically disadvantaged, and underrepresented (e.g., Native American) in western South Dakota, 3) working with Rapid City’s Sustainability Committee to outreach local communities to promote sustainable solar energy and inform them about residential solar deployment’s benefits, 4) partnering with the solar industry and research centers to enhance the infrastructure for research and education, and 5) disseminating research results broader communities with peer-reviewed publications, national and international presentations, and EPV- Life tool, and the team’s Twitter account and YouTube videos. This project is jointly funded by the ENG/CBET Environmental Sustainability program and the Established Program to Stimulate Competitive Research (EPSCoR). This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.