DARPA awards Energy Focus $3.1m to develop spectrum-splitting solar module

Energy Focus Inc of Solon, OH, USA, which provides LED lighting and fiber-optic products, has entered into a $3.1m, two-year contract with the DuPont-University of Delaware VHESC (Very High Efficiency Solar Cell) consortium as part of solar research funded by the US Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) to enable low-cost photovoltaics.

DARPA recently began the second two-year phase of a four-year program with the VHESC consortium to raise the system power efficiency of a new class of solar modules to 40% and to deliver manufacturable engineering prototype modules.

The modules under development by the VHESC team use an optical