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Planning Documents and Technical Roadmaps

The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) Solar Energy Technologies Program focuses on high-risk, high-return research to contribute to the goals of higher efficiencies, lower costs, and longer reliabilities for solar products. The Solar America Initiative is accelerating the development of advanced solar electric technologies, including photovoltaics (PV) and concentrating solar power (CSP) systems, with the goal of making them cost competitive with other forms of electricity by 2015. This work could not be successful without careful planning and collaboration of all stakeholders in the solar community.

This page hosts the primary guiding documents for the strategy and implementation of the Solar America Initiative. We welcome your comments on these documents. The following documents are available as Adobe Acrobat PDFs. Download Adobe Reader.

The Solar America Initiative Posture Plan

The posture plan (PDF 2.1 MB) summarizes key elements of the Solar America Initiative and is available in draft form for public review.

National Solar Technology Roadmaps

During the spring of 2007, the following ten PV technology roadmaps were developed by staff at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL), Sandia National Laboratories, U.S. Department of Energy (DOE), and experts from universities and private industry. This work was done, in part, to support activities within the Solar America Initiative.

We are now providing PDF versions for your review and comment. We invite you to e-mail your comments on particular roadmaps to the contacts following the specific technology areas. Be aware that although we are actively soliciting your feedback, we may not be able to respond to each individual e-mail. Our expectation is to use these comments to help us revise these roadmaps, which will be reposted here by later this summer.

Each technology-specific roadmap includes the following sections:

  • Scope. Brief description of the technology to which this roadmap refers, including: (1) technology development status—stage or stages that best describe the current state of this technology (early R&D, advanced R&D, preproduction prototype, or commercial volume production); and (2) target applications—likely major target markets (residential, commercial, utility, other).

  • Background. Context and perspective for this technology roadmap.

  • Roadmap Overview. Current state of this technology, future state of this technology in a particular year, and key areas of advancement that will lead to achieving that goal.

  • Metrics. Key performance metrics and other quantitative parameters that describe performance, reliability, and manufacturing cost of this technology. Provides a value or range for current state and future state in a particular chosen year.

  • Identified Needs. Major problems, challenges, or opportunities to be addressed by the research plans. Each identified need includes its significance and who should be involved (university, national laboratory, and/or industry). Note that the identified needs do not include R&D tasks; specific R&D tasks will be developed and proposed by researchers in response to this roadmap. Rather, this roadmap lists the specific goals that should be the target of research plans. Items are roughly in rank order, starting with needs that are most important, have the greatest impact, or have the most serious ramifications if not considered.