{"id":3911,"date":"2012-01-02T09:00:14","date_gmt":"2012-01-02T15:00:14","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/texas\/?p=3911"},"modified":"2013-11-15T20:34:56","modified_gmt":"2013-11-16T02:34:56","slug":"texas-professor-has-bright-ideas-for-solar-power","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/texas\/2012\/01\/02\/texas-professor-has-bright-ideas-for-solar-power\/","title":{"rendered":"Texas Professor Has Bright Ideas for Solar Power"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Photo by Mose Buchele\/StateImpact Texas<\/p>

Xiaoyang Zhu of the University of Texas has made a surprising breakthrough in solar power.<\/p><\/div>\n

By almost any measure, 2011 was a rough year for solar power in the U.S.<\/a> Federal subsidies to Solyndra became the focus of a congressional investigation<\/a> after the company went bankrupt. Other solar outfits are feeling pressure on two fronts: low-cost Chinese-manufactured panels are driving prices down around the world<\/a>, and electricity from America\u2019s newly unleashed natural gas reserves is making power from renewable sources seem less economical<\/a>.<\/p>\n

But at the end of the year, a scientist in Austin has brought a little sun into the forecast. Meet\u00a0Xiaoyang Zhu<\/a>, a chemistry professor at the University of Texas, and director of the Energy Frontier Research Center.<\/p>\n\n

For the last few years Zhu and his team have been working on a way to dramatically increase the amount of energy harvested from Solar technology. Now, they think they\u2019ve done it. \u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cSo our recent discovery is this. If you have a light photon,” he says to me, then pauses. “I guess this concept is simple enough, yea?\u201d<\/p>\n

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