Abstract
The Arab oil embargo in 1973 led to an interest in the US in energy independence. In order to realize a dream of a major contribution to our electric power needs here on earth from renewable solar energy, cost became a major driver of a large research effort for solar PV in the US. A group in the US at NREL argued that single crystals were gem stones and would always be intrinsically too expensive and, therefore, non-crystalline thin film cells were needed. This led to a major research effort in the US on thin film solar cells.
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Fraas, L.M. (2014). The Dream of Thin Film PV. In: Low-Cost Solar Electric Power. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-07530-3_6
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-07530-3_6
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