News

26 February 2010

 

CPV Consortium appoints board members from NREL and Fraunhofer ISE

The CPV Consortium, a non-profit concentrator photovoltaic (CPV) solar industry organization, has added two solar industry veterans to its board: Andreas Bett PhD and Martha Symko-Davies PhD. The appointments come at a time when the consortium has commissioned the University of California, Berkeley to undertake an economic analysis of the CPV carbon footprint, cradle-to-cradle.

The CPV Consortium is dedicated to supporting the development and optimizing the success of CPV technology as a mainstream energy source for distributed and utility-scale deployments. The global organization consists of members from all segments of the CPV industry including system manufacturers, cell suppliers, power generators, tracker suppliers, system integrators, project developers, universities and research laboratories.

Dr Bett is a deputy director of the Fraunhofer Institute for Solar Energy ISE in Freiburg, Germany, where he leads a department focused on materials for solar cells and technology. Dr Symko-Davies is a senior supervisor of research at the US Department of Energy's National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL). Both have been elected by members of the consortium to serve on its board of directors. “With the appointments of Drs. Bett and Symko-Davies, the CPV Consortium gains decades of expertise from the highest levels of solar industry research and development,” says consortium director Nancy Hartsoch. “Their insight from Fraunhofer, the DOE and NREL will broaden the perspective of the organization, and hopefully facilitate the benefits that public and private cooperation can bring to an emerging technology at a critical time for CPV commercialization.”

Bett’s department at Fraunhofer ISE includes the group ‘III-V-epitaxy and solar cells’, which is one of the largest groups active in R&D for CPV cells, modules and components. He is also an active member in the IEC (International Electrotechnical Commission), which develops standards for CPV. Bett is currently the chair and main organizer of the 6th International Conference on Concentrating Photovoltaic Systems (CPV-6), to be held in Freiburg in April.

Symko-Davies has worked for NREL since receiving her doctorate in 1997. She has been manager of the PV Technology Incubator since its inception three years ago. At NREL she has held a variety of positions including photovoltaic (PV) manufacturing technology technical manager and high-performance PV project manager. Symko-Davies is also an organizing committee member for the IEEE Photovoltaic Specialists Conference (PVSC) and a member of the American Physical Society (APS). She has authored or co-authored over 30 publications about the PV industry and CPV technology.

As a non-profit organization, all of the CPV Consortium’s activities and affairs are managed by the board of directors. Bett and Symko-Davies join the board along with re-elected members Jan Hildebrandt of 3M and Gerhard Strobl of AZUR SPACE. Founding board members include Pedro Banda of Spain's Institute of Concentration Photovoltaic Systems (ISFOC), Brian Gibson of component, module and system maker Emcore in Albuquerque, NM, USA, Nancy Hartsoch of CPV system maker SolFocus in Sunnyvale, CA, USA, and Hansjörg Lerchenmüller of Concentrix Solar GmbH in Freiburg, Germany.

See related item:

CPV Consortium launched to steer industry growth in concentrating photovoltaics

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