Open-source development of solar photovoltaic technology

Abstract

The rise of solar photovoltaic (PV) technology as a driver of rural electrification in the developing world and a contributor to climate change mitigation suggests that innovations enhancing PV efficiency and scalability could make considerable strides in reducing both poverty and greenhouse gas emissions. The nearly global access to the solar resource coupled to innovationdriven decreases in the costs of PV provides a path for an renewable energy source to accelerate sustainable development. Opensource software development has proven to produce reliable and innovative computer code at lower costs than proprietary software through sharing development responsibility with a large community of invested individuals. Concepts of opensource design have been applied to other fields in an attempt to reap the same benefits realized within software development; however, applying opensource strategies to solar PV research is uncommon. This paper reviews and examines how opensource design can be utilized to catalyze rapid innovation in the PV industry. The results show how successful open design and development methods can be created and utilized by identifying business models that provide PV researchers, turnkey suppliers and solar PV module manufacturers with the opportunity to utilize open source design principles to accelerate innovation.

Open-source, community-driven microfluidics with Metafluidics

“…Each form of protection has its own laws that require time and cost to process legally, making the establishment of open-source hardware licenses complex. The open hardware movement as a whole must overcome these challenges, and the breadth of communities developing open hardware projects-from space flight 40 to photovoltaics 41 -has led to a similar exploration in alternate license models. Notable examples include licenses modeled after the GNU Public License, Arduino's use of multiple licenses, and those modeled after the Apache Software License 40 .…”

Total U.S. cost evaluation of low-weight tension-based photovoltaic flat-roof mounted racking

“…Suitably scaled commercial PV systems on the order of 100 kW or larger will need to be tested with the data provided in the public domain (Buitenhuis and Pearce, 2012) for installers to accept this racking system. This same open source disclosure of the testing results will also be adhered to for the hardware designs themselves following an open-source hardware methodology (Buitenhuis and Pearce, 2012).…”

The Benefits of Sharing—Nice Guys and Girls do Finish First

“…of successful companies [37][38][39][40][41][42][43][44][45][46][47][48][49][50]. If we turn our attention to the PV industry used in our example, there are at least four business models that allow the industry to enjoy the benefits of open-source development [51]. Both a partnership model (where companies pull their resources to attack universal problems) and a franchise model (where resources our pooled, but competition is limited by geographic boundaries) are examples of open-source business systems that could operate within the current industry framework, while still allowing for the sharing of information and direct collaboration.…”