The SunShotinitiative focuses on bringing down costs by pursuing innovations in four particular areas, including solar cell technology, power electronics that optimize the performance of installations, improvements in manufacturing processes, and installation and system design.
The Sunshotinitiative and other key technology innovation programs like the Advanced Research Projects Agency for Energy (ARPA-E), embody the kind of smart innovation policy that holds the promise of fundamentally transforming the economy and ushering in a new era of U.S. technology leadership.
The funding is part of an initiative called SunShot, which was launched in early 2011 to make solar electricity cheap to produce and therefore competitive against energy from coal or natural gas power plants.