Ascent Solar just announced that it has been awarded  a multimillion dollar contract from DARPA under the Low-Cost Lightweight Portable Photovoltaics (PoP) solicitation. Under the contract, Ascent Solar will lead  project called “Flexible High-performance Tandem-junction PV Array” to develop cheap, lightweight PV systems that have a conversion efficiency of 20% or greater and are tough enough to stand up to military use.

The project will consist of 3 phases, the first of which is worth approximately $3.8 million.

To achieve this goal, Ascent will lead a team including both businesses and academic scientists.

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In a press release, Farhad Moghadam, President and CEO of Ascent Solar, commented on the award:

“We are excited that DARPA selected our team for the PoP project. In order to meet the aggressive goals of performance, capacity, and military toughness, our team has put together a definitive plan that combines our flexible CIGS production experience and existing MILSTD 810G military product, advanced high-temperature substrates from QinetiQ, the combined expertise in multijunction thin film technology from ASTI and IEC, films for optical and electrical enhancement from Brewer and Cambrios, and enhanced packaging technologies being developed by ITN and ASTI. The outcome of the program dovetails nicely with our existing technology improvement pathway for our flexible thin film monolithically integrated CIGS-based PV modules at 20% module efficiency for the Department of Defense (DoD).