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Episode #129: 'Innovating the Next Generation of Solar Materials' with Juan-Pablo Correa-Baena, Assistant Professor at Georgia Tech [an Energy Central Power Perspectives™ Podcast]

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Solar energy remains one of the fastest-growing sources of power generation across the utility sector, playing a key role in the net zero plans for power companies and private entities globally. While much of the focus for solar progress comes in how to fast-track deployment-- from government incentives to workforce development to permitting reform-- many potential improvements remain on the table when it comes to the technology itself. To discuss the state of solar tech today and the most exciting areas to come, this episode of the Energy Central Power Perspectives Podcast welcomes Juan-Pablo Correa-Baena.

Juan-Pablo is an Assistant Professor at the Georgia Institute of Technology, renowned for his groundbreaking work in the next generation of solar panel development. In this conversation, Juan-Pablo provides historical context that has led the United States needing to play catch up in solar technology production, and the innovative ways in which the industry is striving to do so. Juan-Pablo also dives into the political ramifications and community benefits associated with onshoring solar manufacturing, areas for potential for further advancements in solar technology, and the breakthroughs his team is specifically working on to unlock the next level of efficiency.

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Thanks to the sponsor of this episode of the Energy Central Power Perspectives Podcast: West Monroe.  

 

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TRANSCRIPT

Jason Price: 

 

Welcome to the Energy Central Power Perspectives Podcast. This is the show that brings the leading minds from the energy industry to discuss the challenges and trends that are transforming and modernizing our energy system. A quick thank you to West Monroe, our sponsor of today's show. Now let's talk energy.

I'm Jason Price, Energy Central Podcast host and director with West Monroe coming to you from New York City, and with me as always, from Orlando, Florida, is Energy Central producer and community manager, Matt Chester.

Matt, we're diving into the world of innovation around material science as it relates to the creation and manufacturing of solar panels and what this may mean for the solar industry in reaching climate goals. The topic we'll be discussing has economic, global, political and local implications. To play it safe, we pulled in an academician in material science and is at the forefront, leading in the next generation of solar panel development. Before we welcome him though, can you set the stage for what we've covered in solar on the podcast and what the hot topics in this field are on Energy Central?

 

Matt Chester: 

Sure thing, Jason. You're right, solar energy, it's a topic that's come up more than once in our catalog of episodes. Looking back, we've chatted with the executive vice president at Summit Ridge Energy on community solar as a program. That was episode 114. We heard about a pilot for floating solar from Turlock Irrigation District in episode 90, and the director of the Department of Energy's solar energy technology office joined us all the way back in episode 43 to highlight the work that the department is doing to build the solar grid of tomorrow. I'd say we focused on the podcast mostly on installations, tariffs, policies, programs, things like that and not as much on the science behind those latest technologies, so I think we're definitely getting into some important new territory for us today.

 

Jason Price: 

Yeah. Thanks for that, Matt. It's good summary. This is definitely a critical topic as the International Energy Agency recently published a report that 2023 global solar investment is projected to overtake oil for the first time. For every $1 in oil, there will be $1 and 70 cents in solar. This bodes well for future US manufacturing of the equipment as we will hear from our next guest. With us to discuss further is Juan-Pablo Correa-Baena, assistant professor at the Georgia Institute of Technology, or Georgia Tech.

Juan-Pablo, welcome to the Energy Central Power Perspectives Podcast.

 

Juan-Pablo Correa-Baena: 

Thank you for having me. It's a pleasure to be here.

 

Jason Price: 

Before we get into the meat of the matter, Juan-Pablo, I'd love if you could give our listeners a bit more of your background. What are your areas of focus at Georgia Tech and what role does the school play in this broader solar technology discussion?

 

Juan-Pablo Correa-Baena: 

Sure thing. I am an assistant professor here at Georgia Tech, and I specialize in material science. My research group is trying to develop the next generation of materials that are going to be coming online on your solar panels in the near future, and so what we're trying to do is, from the fundamental material science, trying to develop these new materials using physics and chemistry to try to bring improved properties, improved durability into the materials.

A little bit more about what we exactly do is we try to come up with new compositions, new chemistries that we can mix together into a material and make a film, for example, and that film will then absorb light, and that light will be converted into electrons with energy that we can store in those electrons and extracted via cables. That's the basics of a solar cell. What we're particularly interested in in my group at Georgia Tech is how this material, this layer, this film that we're growing on a piece of glass, for example, how we can control the structure. When I'm talking about structure, I'm talking about atoms, the arrangement of atoms. When we modify the arrangement of atoms, we modify the crystal structure of these materials, and that in turn has an effect in the properties of the material.

What we're trying to do basically is study structure, crystallographic structure, and property relationships to try to make these materials more efficient and last longer. That's the basics of what we're doing. We have a very, very heavy focus on photovoltaics, devices basically, that we make in our labs. We have this small scale samples that we can put together in our labs to test new compositions and new chemistries, for example. That's what we do in my group. I have a group of about eight to 10 PhD students at a time who are studying different aspects of these materials to try to make them more efficient and last longer.

More broadly, at Georgia Tech, we are trying to tackle the solar challenges from different angles. People like me who are studying materials are going to be more on the fundamental level of trying to understand how to improve materials' properties via modifications of the crystallographic structure, but then there's going to be other people who are going to be more interested in, for example, the manufacturing processes and how do we improve the efficiency of actually making and manufacturing a solar panel, and so there's going to be a lot of mechanical engineers and industrial engineers who are going to be focusing a lot more on the logistics.

There's a lot of new territory that we're trying to cover right now that includes artificial intelligence, for example, helping us spot a faulty solar cell, for example, and using cameras and artificial intelligence to try to help us spot those faulty devices. Georgia Tech at large is having a wide impact in the solar transition, in solar technologies, because we are such an interdisciplinary and large engineering school where we have people like me who are working on more fundamental science and then some other people who are working more on the manufacturing side.

 

Jason Price: 

Yeah. Understood. I mean, certainly, material science is critical to help drive the overall energy transformation, so it's important, absolutely. Let's dig in a little bit further with the recent announcement that the Buy America slogan is important and that we're seeing technology overtake oil, but how did we get to where we are today? Can you give us a bit of a history lesson about what led to the point where the US is really playing catch-up now with solar development?

 

Juan-Pablo Correa-Baena: 

Absolutely. Let's start in 1839 when the photovoltaic effect was discovered by Edmond Becquerel. That's the first time that we see that we can convert sunlight into voltage and current. That's the first time that we hear about this. Later on, in 1954, Einstein got the Nobel Prize for the photoelectric effects where he basically was able to show that a photon of light can basically remove an electron from a metal, and then later on, in the '70s and '80s, we started investing into this idea of having a photon coming into a material, interacting with that material and producing electricity with it by basically giving energy, that energy from the photon, into an electron and into a ground state electron that then goes up in energy. About a hundred years passed until we actually started using this and tried to really understand how to make solar cells that were efficient enough for them to be economical.

The '70s and the '80s was a big time for photovoltaics, but we were still in a very, very niche environment. We were looking at solar panels that would be useful for space application. We didn't care about the costs of these panels. We were using them to power satellites and to use power in space. For that, we were flushed with cash and we just didn't really care about how much we were spending on them. Of course, the '70s, there was the oil crisis where oil prices were really high, and we started thinking, okay, maybe we're approaching peak oil, and that also brought a lot of incentive for the community to start looking into other sources that didn't include oil. That's when we started looking at photovoltaics as a viable way for producing electricity.

Fast forward to 2000, and we still haven't gotten there 30 years later. About 30 years later, even until 2010, we didn't really make solar panels that made economic sense. We were making solar panels that were relatively low in efficiency, relatively expensive to manufacture and definitely much more expensive than burning oil to produce electricity or burning coal, for example, to produce electricity.

What really happened here is an example of economies of scale where Asian governments, specifically China, came in and provided at a lot of incentives for companies to come and set up a factory in Chinese territory to basically make that process much more cheaply, make that process much more low cost. It was basically economies of scale basically coming in and making large systems that would be able to handle a lot of wafers and automation for making the process much more efficient and low cost. That happened in the 2000s, let's say 2010, 2011, and that really had a huge impact in the price of a solar panel and the electricity that we get from a solar panel, one because the efficiencies at the module scale were increased to almost 20%. Now, I think we're beyond 20% for the module. That's one, and then, two, because of this idea of economies of scale where we're able to scale up processes and, therefore, reduce costs.

 

Jason Price: 

Right. No. That's a very helpful historical review and certainly forward-looking at I guess you could say some of American ingenuity and in terms of solving the problem, but I'm sure there was contributions around the globe. Certainly, when you mentioned the Asian market, they have really capitalized on the scalability of manufacturing. That's a key component to the success story.

Where you sit, tell us, if you can, what is the industry doing to develop and bring the manufacturing capacity back to the US, and what are you seeing in labs around manufacturing? There's a material science component to it, but there's a manufacturing component to it. Can you speak about the manufacturing side of all this?

 

Juan-Pablo Correa-Baena: 

Sure. Let me very briefly talk about the material science first, and then I'll go into the manufacturing if that's okay. From the material science perspective, we are trying to develop new materials. That's something that I already discussed at the top of the show, where we're trying to develop new materials that will be, let's say, the next generation of solar panels. What is very critical here is to understand that the materials that we're trying to develop right now are going to be important. The materials that we're trying to develop now are going to bring the cost down in the manufacturing, but also in the amount of money that we're going to be spending in terms of setting up a factory, so what we call capital expenditures.

This is where innovation comes in and where the US can lead the way where we can basically come in and say, okay, we have a lot of resources in the US to study this fundamental problems. Can we come up with a material that then we'll basically overtake the solar technology realm? That's from a materials point of view. That's something that I'm actively working on, and then, from the manufacturing point of view, there's a couple of things. I mentioned briefly artificial intelligence, for example. That's something that has exploded in the past few years where now we have machine learning algorithms that are helping us understand data that, even five years ago, we didn't know how to deal with.

I'll give you an example. Here in my own labs, I'm making solar cells, and I'm making these solar cells and I'm trying to test them. When I'm testing them, I'm able to produce a lot of data points, but sometimes what happens is that we have so much data, it's very difficult for my students, my PhD students, to go in and understand what the data is telling you. What we're doing is using machine learning algorithms that help us parse through the data and try to understand what this data is actually telling us.

This is something that is new and that the US has done a tremendous job in terms of trying to implement in manufacturing, not only in manufacturing, but pretty much everywhere. We're using it university level, and so industry is also trying to do the same. This actually helps a lot with speeding up processes because, once you have an algorithm that goes in, checks pictures of your solar panels, for example, or images, photo luminescence images, for example, which is used as a proxy for how good a solar panel is, the human eye might not be able to catch some defects that are going to be consequential to the long-term durability of the solar panel, but an algorithm will be. We can train these algorithms to look for some of these defects and be able to catch some of these defects that will be detrimental to the solar panel in the long term.

I think that there's a lot of innovation in the manufacturing sector that is now related to more of the automation and that sort of thing. That's something that we already kind of perfected so that we can have very high throughput, but now the next generation of these plants or these manufacturing facilities are going to have to implement artificial intelligence and machine learning algorithms.

 

Jason Price: 

Okay. If I may repeat back some of what I heard here, the way we manufacture solar panels today is going to be far different in terms of how we're going to be doing in the future because the material will be different and the technology around AI and the analysis and the quality controls and such will be different so that we will basically dominate or potentially be further ahead than our competition, China and others, in the future manufacturing of the next generation of solar panels. Is that basically what you're saying?

 

Juan-Pablo Correa-Baena: 

Yep. Exactly. Yeah, I think this is a two-way approach, and one is short term, which is happening right now, and the other one is a little bit more long term. The short term is, yeah, how can we make the analysis of the manufacturing line more efficient? How can we speed that up? That's where artificial intelligence can help us. The long term is going to be more what is the next generation of materials that we're going to be developing to have materials that can be produced at lower cost, at lower temperatures? Temperature here is key because silicon ingots are made at over 1,000 degrees Celsius, and that puts very big constraint in the manufacturing process. That's something that you really cannot avoid in silicon, so can we come up with new sets of materials that will require, let's say, a hundred or 200 degrees Celsius, which is something that we can do with a simple oven versus a very complicated oven that actually itself has a carbon footprint?

 

Jason Price: 

Solar technology has become so much more efficient and so much cheaper in the past few decades. How much room for improvement is really left? What are some of the new breakthroughs your teams are looking at to maturity that can unlock the next level or the next generation. I guess you could say does Moore's Law apply with solar panels?

 

Juan-Pablo Correa-Baena: 

It's a really good question. I think that we're really approaching the lowest costs in solar. The good news is that we're at or below the cost of producing electricity from, for example, coal or natural gas. You probably know this. This is what we call price parity, where we try to match the cost of electricity produced from solar to that of the traditional sources. We basically are below price parity or right up about price parity where solar can now compete with established sources of electricity.

That's one thing, but there's something else that is even more important as we go forward, and it has to do with cost. I mentioned it a little bit just before that we are interested in lowering the temperatures at which we are producing these materials, and that's going to have an impact in manufacturing. Why? Because we have these materials that are produced at a thousand degrees, so those are going to be the silicon-based materials that require this very high investment in equipment.

Let's say, if you want to set up a manufacturing plant for silicon wafers, that's going to cost you a couple of billion dollars, and that's mainly because we have very complicated processes that are involved in manufacturing the ingots of silicon. That require very low levels of contamination, so have to use clean rooms, for example. Then you also have the temperature constraint where you have to use these furnaces to remove impurities and melt the silicon dioxide to make it into a silicon wafer, into a silicon ingot. There's a bunch of different things that come with current approach that are very expensive up front, and that has an impact on who and how these manufacturing facilities come online and who is able to invest in that, so it comes to how much money do we have available to set up a factory like that?

Now, the Inflation Reduction Act has provided a lot of tax incentives and loans to help make this transition, but we would like to make it even easier for the next generations of manufacturers to come in and say, hey, maybe I'm going to set up a smaller plant in a couple of places throughout the US that are not two or $3 billion to set up, but maybe 300 or $400 million. I think that's where we can make the biggest impact is how fast do we transition and how fast can we set up manufacturing plants across the world, not just the US, but across the world so that we can go into a future where we have maximum capacity of manufacturing of solar panels.

Just to wrap up that question, I think how I see this is that we have reached price parity and going below that. Probably, we can do it with incentives and some of the manufacturing advantages that we're going to have regarding AI, for example, we can continue to drop that price a little bit, but we're really saturating right now. That cost is not going to go down that much lower than it is currently. Where we can have an impact is in how much it costs for us to set up a manufacturing facility, and that's a more long-term vision that we're trying to have here in my group at Georgia Tech.

 

Jason Price: 

All right. Well, Pablo, you covered a wide spectrum of categories from the political environment, I guess you could say, the regulatory, the scientific, the cost, R&D, the materials, and so the process from one end of the spectrum to the next. If you could influence that policy side to be as beneficial as possible for further development in this space, what would you recommend? What would you look at and how would you influence that? Why would you want to influence that?

 

Juan-Pablo Correa-Baena: 

If you would've talked to me a year ago, I would've said let's pass a bill in Congress that allows for manufacturers to come and get interest-free or very cheap loans so that they can set up manufacturing plants. Fortunately, that happened. It was not at the scale that I think we needed, but it's pretty good, and that's the Inflation Reduction Act. That's been very monumental for the solar landscape in the country because now we have companies like Qcells here in Georgia coming in and saying, hey, there's this tax breaks and, if we bring the whole manufacturing plant that manufactures the ingots all the way to the panel here in Georgia, these are the types of incentives that we can have from the state and from the federal government. That's been great. It's created a big push for companies to come in and invest and set up manufacturing facilities here.

I'd say that we still need a little bit more. We need to continue pushing that and making sure that it's not just Georgia, but other states that are continuing to do that. Hopefully, we will see that as the IRA continues to be deployed. I think where we could have a big impact, and it's relatively inexpensive, is in the permitting side. Right now, if you want to set up a solar farm, you have to have permit permits basically to plug into the grid. There's a lot of red tape. I think that that's something that Congress was trying to pass right around the same time as the Inflation Reduction Act was being passed, but it was not able to pass the full bill as it's needed. We still have a barrier to deployment of solar farms because of permitting issues. I think that that's something where Congress should be acting and making it easier.

Also, at the Department of Energy level, I know that they're working very diligently to try to make sure that that process is sped up. It's a work in progress, but, for sure, something that we need to put more effort into.

 

Jason Price: 

Yeah. No doubt. Well, this has been really informative. It's always great to have the academic point of view especially of someone like yourself who's innovating and really in the thick of it and hoping to lead the way. This has been really enlightening. I Appreciate it.

Juan-Pablo, now we've reached the point of what we call the lightning round, which is an opportunity to learn a little bit more of you the person rather than you the scientist. I'm going to ask you five questions, and you either respond back either with one word or phrase. Are you ready?

 

Juan-Pablo Correa-Baena: 

I am ready.

 

Jason Price: 

Okay. Favorite snack food?

 

Juan-Pablo Correa-Baena: 

Pickles, believe it or not.

 

Jason Price: 

Do you have any hidden talents?

 

Juan-Pablo Correa-Baena: 

I am a good dancer.

 

Jason Price: 

What is your ideal vacation?

 

Juan-Pablo Correa-Baena: 

I enjoy backpacking in countries where I don't speak their language.

 

Jason Price: 

Who do you look up to?

 

Juan-Pablo Correa-Baena: 

John Goodenough. He actually just passed away yesterday or two days ago. He was the Nobel laureate for 2019 in chemistry for inventing the lithium ion battery.

 

Jason Price: 

What are you most motivated by?

 

Juan-Pablo Correa-Baena: 

Discovery and science. It's what motivates me. That's why I'm doing this job, trying to create new things and new technologies, and also good food.

 

Jason Price: 

You did a great job there and a great job overall, so we're going to give you the last word. What would you like and hope our listeners take away from this episode?

 

Juan-Pablo Correa-Baena: 

Yeah, so I think that we're at a turning point in the country in terms of what solar is going to be for the energy landscape, and that's something that a year ago was not sure was going to happen so quick. I see it both at the federal level, at the state level, at the local level, people thinking about it, but also manufacturing coming in. That's something that is just happening. We're living through. It's really exciting, and I think that the future of solar is definitely bright, and we're going to see great things coming in the next decade or so in terms of how the energy transition is going to happen.

 

Jason Price: 

Yeah, and we'll be excited to see it as well. We appreciate your time. You have an incredibly busy schedule. I'm glad we were able to find time to book you on the show. I'm eager to see the comments and questions that will be coming from the Energy Central community, so certainly be sure to look at those questions and keep the conversation going, but until then, I just want to thank you for sharing your insight with us on today's episode of the podcast.

 

Juan-Pablo Correa-Baena: 

Perfect. Thank you so much for having me here.

 

Jason Price: 

You can always reach Juan-Pablo through the Energy Central platform where he welcomes your questions and comments. We also want to give a shout out of thanks to the podcast sponsors that made today's episode possible. Thanks to West Monroe. West Monroe works with the nation's largest electric, gas, and water utilities in their telecommunication, grid modernization, and digital and workforce transformations. West Monroe brings a multidisciplinary team that blends utility, operations and technology expertise to address modernizing aging infrastructure, advisory on transportation electrification, ADMS deployments, data and analytics, and cybersecurity.

Once again, I'm your host, Jason Price. Plug in and stay fully charged in the discussion by hopping into the community at energycentral.com, and we'll see you next time at the Energy Central Power Perspectives Podcast.

 

About Energy Central Podcasts

The ‘Energy Central Power Perspectives™ Podcast’ features conversations with thought leaders in the utility sector. At least twice monthly, we connect with an Energy Central Power Industry Network community member to discuss compelling topics that impact professionals who work in the power industry. Some podcasts may be a continuation of thought-provoking posts or discussions started in the community or with an industry leader that is interested in sharing their expertise and doing a deeper dive into hot topics or issues relevant to the industry.

The ‘Energy Central Power Perspectives™ Podcast’ is the premiere podcast series from Energy Central, a Power Industry Network of Communities built specifically for professionals in the electric power industry and a place where professionals can share, learn, and connect in a collaborative environment. Supported by leading industry organizations, our mission is to help global power industry professionals work better. Since 1995, we’ve been a trusted news and information source for professionals working in the power industry, and today our managed communities are a place for lively discussions, debates, and analysis to take place. If you’re not yet a member, visit www.EnergyCentral.com to register for free and join over 200,000 of your peers working in the power industry.

The Energy Central Power Perspectives™ Podcast is hosted by Jason Price, Community Ambassador of Energy Central. Jason is a Business Development Executive at West Monroe, working in the East Coast Energy and Utilities Group. Jason is joined in the podcast booth by the producer of the podcast, Matt Chester, who is also the Community Manager of Energy Central and energy analyst/independent consultant in energy policy, markets, and technology.  

If you want to be a guest on a future episode of the Energy Central Power Perspectives™ Podcast, let us know! We’ll be pulling guests from our community members who submit engaging content that gets our community talking, and perhaps that next guest will be you! Likewise, if you see an article submitted by a fellow Energy Central community member that you’d like to see broken down in more detail in a conversation, feel free to send us a note to nominate them.  For more information, contact us at [email protected]. Podcast interviews are free for Expert Members and professionals who work for a utility.  We have package offers available for solution providers and vendors. 

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