The Fraunhofer Center for Sustainable Energy Systems (CSE) is pleased to announce that it will be exhibiting at next week's Intersolar North America conference and trade show, taking place from July 8th to July 11th at the Moscone Convention Center in San Francisco, California. In addition to promoting its R and D services, the Center will be showcasing two major initiatives intended to accelerate solar adoption in the United States.

Last December, the US Department of Energy selected Fraunhofer CSE to lead a 5-year, $11.7M research project to develop "plug-and-play" solar photovoltaic (PV) systems that eliminate many of the sources of "soft costs" that are currently slowing the deployment of residential PV systems.

This project is funded by the DOE's SunShot Initiative, and addresses issues such as installation, permitting, inspection, and grid connection through improvements in module and mounting technology.

In addition, the CSE team is working with the national codes and standards community to identify hurdles to system deployment, propose code changes, and develop technologies that ensure compliance with local building requirements.

CSE also will be discussing results from the PV Durability Initiative (PVDI), an integrated test and research initiative that builds on existing standards to create a more accurate, quantitative and comparative test procedure for assessing long-term durability in PV modules.

The quantitative third-party data generated by PVDI makes it possible to compare modules based on their likelihood to perform reliably over their service lifetime, and enables developers and financiers to make more informed deployment and investment decisions.

Manufacturers can use the results to improve their designs, and can submit modules for confidential testing. This industry-oriented testing standard is developed in collaboration with the Fraunhofer Institute for Solar Energy Systems (ISE) in Germany.