The 7th Annual Symposium of the Center for Optoelectronics and Optical Communications was held on Thursday November 6th.  This was the first such symposium to have a specific theme, namely the role of optics in technologies for renewable energy.  The meeting was sponsored by the Charlotte Research Institute and the vendor exhibit highlighted products from fifteen companies, including Sencera, Balluff, Veeco, Busch and Argand Energy Solutions.    Dhiaa  Jamil, Group Executive and Chief Nuclear Officer for Duke Energy set the scene, describing the challenges facing the energy industry today, both because of imminent workforce shortages and the need to  develop affordable renewable energy sources such as solar.  He is the chairing the advisory board for the new UNCC Energy Production and Infrastructure Center (EPIC) borne out of the College of Engineering.   National initiatives to address these concerns were described by Ed Walker, Co-PI of NSF’s Powering the Planet” program and Alex Huang from NCSU,  PI of a new NSF ERC that looks to develop technology that allows even domestic energy generation to feed seamlessly into the national grid.   The NC Solar Center, founded in 1988,  was represented by Alex Hobbs who described the testing and training services they provide, along with support in dealing with the myriad of regulations that go with use of renewables.   Michael Lebby,   President of the Optoelectronics Industry Development Association, provided a detailed and encouraging survey of global initiatives, especially in Germany, to adopt solar power generation.

Following these big picture presentations, more detailed technical talks on the merits and limitations of harvesting sunlight filled the rest of the day.  Distinguished Professor Ray Tsu, for many years leading the DOE’s photovoltaic efforts at the Solar Energy Research Institute (now the National Energy Research Laboratory : NREL) cautioned attendees to beware of over-enthusiasm and hype when reading about advances in  solar cell advances and efficiencies.  This was followed by  excellent overviews of  the state of photovoltaic R&D from Rob Walters at NRL and Angelo Mascarenhas from NREL.  Art Feldman from Newport Corporation described tools for testing solar cells and Saleem Zaidi of Gratings Inc.  presented low cost approaches to developing solar conversion technologies for the third world.  The meeting ended with a look to the future.  Mike Sullivan of Kiara demonstrated the effectiveness of some novel light concentrating optics to improve efficiencies, Ken Gonsalves and Jordan Poler from the Chemistry Department proposed innovative materials to efficiently trap light and transport charge while Matt Parrow made a compelling argument to manage sunlight to farm algae for environmentally neutral biofuels.   It was a long day, with a lot of information exchanged,  but, if I dare say it,   enlightening and highly energizing.