The Victoria-Suntech Advanced Solar Facility made its first formal public appearance on Tuesday, June 1, 2010. The operations of the facility will help commercialize NANOPLAS, a nanoplasmonic solar cell technology being researched and developed by Swinburne University of Technology and Suntech Power Holdings.





The PRNewswire article Swinburne and Suntech Launch Advanced Solar Facility in Melbourne states, 'The Victoria-Suntech Advanced Solar Facility (VSASF) was officially launched today in Melbourne, with the Victorian Minister for Environment and Climate Change, and Innovation, Gavin Jennings MLC, on hand to commemorate the event.'The Victoria-Suntech Advanced Solar Facility (VSASF) is a joint effort of Swinburne University of Technology (Melbourne, Victoria, Australia) and Suntech Power Holdings Co., Ltd. (Wuxi, China).The project was partially funded by a 3 million dollar grant (in Australian dollars) under the Victorian Science Agenda Investment Fund.And, the VSASF partnership will help to commercialize NANOPLAS, which is a nanoplasmonic solar cell technology being developed by Swinburne and Suntech.The VSASF project is being coordinated by Dr. Min Gu, who is the director of the Swinburne Centre for Micro-Photonics, and Dr. Zhengrong Shi, who is Suntech's Chairman and CEO.Page two concludes with comments by Drs. Gu and Shi about the new VSASF venture in Melbourne.

Please read the PRNewswire article ' Swinburne and Suntech Launch Advanced Solar Facility in Melbourne ' in more detail to learn more about this advancement in solar cell technology being developed in Australia.

Dr.Gu states in the PRNewswire article, "This new NANOPLAS technology will allow for the efficient collection of solar energy from a wider colour spectrum than cells currently being developed in other laboratories.'



And, 'This could make them twice as efficient as the current generation of cells, which would also make them significantly less costly to produce and therefore to use."



Dr. Shi adds, "By combining Swinburne University's strong research capabilities and Suntech's R&D and manufacturing platform, we can accelerate the development of cutting-edge technologies to drive down the cost of solar.'



Shi concludes with: 'As solar reaches grid parity, in Australia and around the world, we are powering a revolution that will permanently redefine how the world uses energy."