{"id":133558,"date":"2021-01-07T14:35:21","date_gmt":"2021-01-08T00:35:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.hawaii.edu\/news\/?p=133558"},"modified":"2021-01-07T14:37:14","modified_gmt":"2021-01-08T00:37:14","slug":"national-solar-innovation-semifinalists","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.hawaii.edu\/news\/2021\/01\/07\/national-solar-innovation-semifinalists\/","title":{"rendered":"UH<\/abbr> M\u0101noa startup among national solar innovation semifinalists"},"content":{"rendered":"Reading time: <\/span> 2<\/span> minutes<\/span><\/span>

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A University of Â鶹´«Ã½<\/span> at M\u0101noa<\/a> startup is shining in a national competition designed to energize U.S. solar manufacturing. Â鶹´«Ã½<\/span> Innovation Lab<\/a> is among 20 teams representing 12 states that have been selected to advance into the semifinals of the American-Made Solar Prize<\/a>, a $3 million competition funded by the U.S. Department of Energy and administered by the National Renewable Energy Laboratory. Each team won $50,000 and will continue to the next phase of competition.<\/p>\n

The team is developing a low-cost liquid metal coating for concentrated solar power (CSP<\/abbr>) polymeric mirrors. Current CSP<\/abbr> technology uses bulky and costly glass mirrors. As a lighter alternative, polymeric mirror film is cheaper than glass mirrors, yet expensive to manufacture. Â鶹´«Ã½<\/span> Innovation Lab is working to develop a room temperature liquid-metal thin-film deposition technique and CSP<\/abbr> polymeric mirror film that will reduce expenditures by 80% and film cost by 50%.<\/p>\n

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From left, Arif Rahman, Kareem Elassy and Aaron Ohta<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The Â鶹´«Ã½<\/span> Innovation Lab team consists of Arif Rahman<\/strong>, team captain and UH<\/abbr> M\u0101noa electrical engineering<\/a> postdoctoral fellow; Aaron Ohta<\/strong>, UH<\/abbr> M\u0101noa electrical engineering professor; and Kareem Elassy<\/strong>, UH<\/abbr> M\u0101noa electrical engineering PhD<\/abbr> graduate, and research and development integration engineer at Intel.<\/p>\n

“The team is excited to have an opportunity to shape the future of American solar through the American-Made Solar Prize Round 4,” Rahman said. “We\u2019re working with an incredible group of supporters—from national labs to energy incubators, including local supporters Natural Energy Laboratory of Â鶹´«Ã½<\/span> Authority—to help make our technology a reality.”<\/p>\n

Â鶹´«Ã½<\/span> Innovation Lab will pitch the progress of its work to a team of expert reviewers through a virtual demonstration in April 2021. The expert reviewers will examine how well competitors have advanced their idea into a proof-of-concept. From there, 10 finalists will be selected to advance to the final phase of competition, each winning $100,000 in cash prizes and $75,000 in technical support.<\/p>\n

This work is an example of UH<\/abbr> M\u0101noa\u2019s goal of Excellence in Research<\/a>, one of four goals identified in the 2015–25 Â鶹´«Ã½<\/a>, updated in December 2020.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Hawaii Innovation Lab will advance into the semifinals of the American-Made Solar Prize in April 2021.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":16,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[30],"tags":[679,179,182,598,1363,9],"class_list":["post-133558","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-research","tag-alumni-recognition","tag-college-of-engineering","tag-engineering","tag-faculty-recognition","tag-manoa-research","tag-uh-manoa","entry","has-media"],"aioseo_notices":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hawaii.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/133558","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hawaii.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hawaii.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hawaii.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/16"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hawaii.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=133558"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.hawaii.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/133558\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":133570,"href":"https:\/\/www.hawaii.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/133558\/revisions\/133570"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hawaii.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=133558"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hawaii.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=133558"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hawaii.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=133558"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}