The Energy Blog

Nanosolar Ships First Panels

In one of the most significant announcements in renewable energy for the year Nanosolar, producer of CIGS solar cells made using nanoparticle ink and roll-printing technology, announced that it has shipped its first product and received their first check from product revenue. They are already sold out for the next 12 months and are working to scale their production capacity as fast as possible. The advent of low cost thin film cells, that according to Nanosolar will be able to be produced sold for $0.99 per Watt, should mean that low cost solar can be produced at the lowest cost ever and can be produced at sites that are more distributed than from thermal solar. When this cost is achieved, it will mean that solar is competitive with all other forms of power production and only geographical limitations -- lack of sun -- will limit its proliferation -- and of course the problem of storage of energy.  This moves the development of energy storage technologies to the top of the list of priorities for renerwable energy technologies, where it should have been for some time. It has 647,000 sq ft of manufacturing capability in the U.S. and Germany. 430. ,000 Mw of capacity per year in CA according to this CNBC video. Could this be the begining of the end of all other forms of solar power.

In the December 18 Nanosolar Blog Martin Roscheisen, CEO of Nanosolar writes:

Our product is defining in more ways I can enumerate here but includes:

- the world’s first printed thin-film solar cell in a commercial panel product;

- the world’s first thin-film solar cell with a low-cost back-contact capability;

- the world’s lowest-cost solar panel – which we believe will make us the first solar manufacturer capable of profitably selling solar panels at as little as $.99/Watt;

- the world’s highest-current thin-film solar panel – delivering five times the current of any other thin-film panel on the market today and thus simplifying system deployment;

- an intensely systems-optimized product with the lowest balance-of-system cost of any thin-film panel – due to innovations in design we have included.

Today we are announcing that we have begun shipping panels for freefield deployment in Eastern Germany and that the first Megawatt of our panels will go into a power plant installation there.

Sharp to Up Thin-film Solar Cell Capacity

Sharp Corp (OTC: SHCAY (ADR) ), the worlds largest producer of solar cells, announced on Thursday it would invest 22 billion yen ($200 million) to increase capacity for thin-film solar cells at its Katsuragi Plant (shown left, Nara Prefecture, Japan) from the current level of 15 MW (megawatts) to 160 MW (160,000 kW) per year by October 2008.

Thin-film solar cells are fabricated by depositing thin layers of silicon on a glass substrate. This structure enables a dramatic reduction in the amount of silicon raw material used to approximately one hundredth the amount used in conventional crystalline solar cells, and also provides for shorter production process times and lower costs from manufacturing economies of scale.

Sharp began mass production of tandem thin-film solar cells with a tandem-junction structure (amorphous silicon and microcrystalline silicon) in September 2005. Now, Sharp is making thin-film solar cells with a triple-junction structure, which consists of two amorphous layers and a microcrystalline layer. With these triple-junction thin-film solar cells, Sharp has achieved module conversion efficiencies of approximately 10%, at the industry's top level.

According to this earlier announcement Sharp was to increase annual production capacity for solar cells at its Katsuragi Plant to 600 MW by November 2006, the world's highest. This current announcement would bring the total to 765 MW.

This Reuters story reported that Sharp had previously announced plans to ramp up its thin-film capacity with a new plant in Sakai in Osaka prefecture to go online by March 2010 and eventually target output of 1,000MW per year at this facility.

Sharp also has UK production capability of 220MW.

First Solar Posts Record Sales, Receives Substantial Contracts and Announces New Manufacturing Capacity

Producer of CdTe thin-film PV solar modules, First Solar, Inc. (Nasdaq:FSLR) announced its financial results for the third quarter ended September 29, 2007. Quarterly revenues were $159.0 million, up from $77.2 million in the second quarter of fiscal 2007 and up from $40.8 million in the third quarter of fiscal 2006. Net income for the three months ended Sept. 30 rose about ten times to $46 million, or 58 cents a share, from an adjusted year-ago profit of $4.3 million, or 6 cents a share.

Analysts surveyed by Thomson Financial forecast earnings of 19 cents a share and revenue of $120 million, on average.

Based on these results First Solar rallied 34% on Thursday to a new closing high of 230 after increasing from about $125 to $150 in the month of October, but retreated to $207 on Friday.

This is real evidence that Wall Street is taking Solar seriously. Their manufacturing capacity for a non-silicon solar cell producer must be among the highest, if not the highest.  Thin-film technology is where the action is going to be. See Nanomarkets Reports on TFPV for another opinion.

Additionally it announced that it has entered into new long term module supply agreements with a subsidiary of international investment and funds and asset manager Babcock & Brown, and Ecostream Switzerland GmbH, a subsidiary of Econcern BV.The new agreements expand contracted module volume by a total of 557MW, allowing for additional sales of approximately $1 billion at an assumed exchange rate of $1.30/E1.00 over the period of 2008 to 2012.

To meet the demand expected from the sales contracts, First Solar's board of directors approved, on Nov 5, the construction of a fourth manufacturing plant in Malaysia with four production lines with an annual nameplate production capacity of 120 Megawatts, bringing the total number of production lines to 16 for the Malaysian Manufacturing Center. The new plant is scheduled to start production in the second half of 2009 and will be built adjacent to the three previously announced plants currently under construction in Malaysia.

First Solar operates manufacturing plants in the U.S. and Germany with total annual nameplate production capacity of 210MW and is currently constructing three additional manufacturing plants in Malaysia with total annual nameplate production capacity of 360MW. Apparently this newest announcement is in addition to the 120MW announced on Sept 27. This expansion will bring the company's total annual nameplate production capacity to 690MW upon completion of all announced projects by the end of 2009.

HelioVolt Announces Closing of its Series B Funding for $101 Million

HelioVolt Corporation, a producer of highly-efficient thin film solar products, announced the closing of its Series B funding round for a total of $101 million. This makes it the largest clean-tech venture capital financing on record according to Matt Marshall of Venture Beat. The additional funding will be used to accelerate scale-up and global deployment of HelioVolt’s proprietary manufacturing process for Copper Indium Gallium Selenide (CIGS) building-integrated solar products.

HelioVolt Corporation was founded in 2001 to develop and market new technology for applying thin film photovoltaic coatings to a variety of substrates including conventional construction materials. The company’s  process, based on rapid semiconductor printing, was invented by HelioVolt founder Dr. Billy J. Stanbery, an eminent expert within the international PV community in the materials science of CIGS and related compound semiconductors.  FASST™ is a low-cost, flexible manufacturing process for CIGS synthesis and is protected by both nine issued US patents and by numerous global patents pending.

Air Products and Konarka to Work on Transparent Solar Modules for Building Applications

Air Products, Allentown, Pa, (NYSE:APD) and Konarka Inc. of Lowell, Mass., have been selected by the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), Advanced Technology Program (ATP) to conduct research and development on transparent, flexible solar modules, using organic pohotovotaic technology (OPV), for windows and other building integrated applications. The $4.7 million award for the $9.6 million project is part of NIST’s Advanced Technology Program which looks to foster new technology developments by U.S. companies.

The technology will be suitable for use in windows capable of controlling transparency for privacy, regulating the wavelength of light passing through for energy conservation, and for aesthetics. Since the materials are capable of harvesting indoor as well as outdoor light, the solar modules can be integrated into building sensors, battery chargers, lighting and displays, and wireless security monitoring systems.

Miasolé Raises $50 million, Has Started Production

Thin-film solar-cell maker Miasole, the Santa Clara, CA, USA start-up which makes CIGS (Copper Indium Gallium Selenium) solar cells, has raised $50 million more in venture capital in a fourth round of financing.

According to Venture Beat, the company says it has started shipping its cells to its first two customers, . . . both in China. The company assembles its solar modules in Shanghai.

Another Venture Beat article reported:

Miasolé is one of a handful of players producing solar technology based on CIGS materials. These companies, which include Nanosolar, HelioVolt and Konarka (and Honda) are all racing to be first to market. Nanosolar made waves in June, when it announced that it would build the world's largest solar cell factory.

In an interview with VentureWire in May, [Chief Executive David] Pearce said Miasolé was in the process of building a production facility with 50 megawatts of capacity….So far, Miasolé has raised at least $58 million from investors including Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, VantagePoint Venture Partners, Firelake Strategic Technology Fund, Garage Technology Ventures and Nippon Kouatsu Electric Co. Pearce would not comment on new investors in the round.

In March DOE announced that it had funded Miasole, subject to negotiations. DOE funding for the first year of the project is expected to be $5,800,000, with approximately $20,000,000 available over three years if the team meets its goals. With the addition of the most recent $50 million this brings the total raised by Miasole to over $100 million, I don't know whether this is included in the $58 million total above.

Thin-Film solar Market Soaring

According to a new report from NanoMarkets LC the global market for thin-film photovoltaics (TFPV) is forecast to reach $7.2 billion by 2015, compared to just over $1.0 billion today.

The report states that the market is being driven by the inherent advantages of TFPV. . . . most manufacturers are ramping up production capacity and several -- including First Solar, Fuji Electric, Nanosolar, Sanyo, Uni-Solar and G24i -- are building plants with more than 100 MW in capacity.

Some of the findings of the report include:

• PV could eventually account for as much as 20 percent of the U.S. market's energy needs.
• TFPV was only five percent of the entire PV market recently , but it is expected to account for 35 percent of the photovoltaics market by 2015.
• TFPV can be manufactured using simple printing or other R2R machines.  Printing TFPV has the potential for lowering capital costs by as much as 75 percent, reducing waste and increasing throughput.

It's not just climate and population that are bottlenecking

Some of you (at least one) have questioned my belief that resources of Gallium and Indium may limit the production of CIGS solar cells.  I ran across a forum that had a post on the same subject. An article, 'Earths natural wealth: an audit', that came from the NewScientistis Environment, 23 May 2007 was posted. One paragraph is as follows:

Take the metal gallium, which along with indium is used to make indium gallium arsenide. This is the semiconducting material at the heart of a new generation of solar cells that promise to be up to twice as efficient as conventional designs. Reserves of both metals are disputed, but in a recent report René Kleijn, a chemist at Leiden University in the Netherlands, concludes that current reserves "would not allow a substantial contribution of these cells" to the future supply of solar electricity. He estimates gallium and indium will probably contribute to less than 1 per cent of all future solar cells - a limitation imposed purely by a lack of raw material. ...  read more

Suntech Begins Construction of Thin-film Facilities

Suntech Power Holdings Co., Ltd. (NYSE: STP), China's largest manufacturers of photovoltaic (PV) cells and modules, recently announced that it has begun construction on a thin film R&D and manufacturing facility in Shanghai, China. The first phase of the new plant is expected to begin operation in 2008 reaching 50MW of thin film solar cell production capacity in 2009.

Suntech's thin film module production will be based on technology that deposits amorphous and micro-crystalline silicon thin film on glass substrate. The product will use less than 2% of the silicon required to manufacture equivalent crystalline silicon PV products. Suntech currently projects that the thin film modules will have a solar conversion efficiency of 6% to 9% and an initial production cost of approximately $1.20 per watt (based on 6% solar conversion efficiency), which is forecasted to continue to decline as both production scale and conversion efficiencies increase. The thin film modules will be nearly 6 square meters in size, which would make the balance of system installation costs of Suntech's thin film solution significantly lower than other PV solutions.

"After having acquired MSK, one of the industry leaders in the building integrated photovoltaic products (BIPV) space, we were very pleased to see that there is both a strong and long term global sales market for these products, especially thin film PV modules. We plan to combine our thin film product with MSK's BIPV product thereby capturing a greater portion of the PV value chain in a higher margin, higher ASP and higher value added product segment," said Dr. Zhengrong Shi Suntech's Chairman and CEO.

Suntech recent letter of intent with U.S.-based Open Energy to further BIPV initiatives is intended to expand BIPV sales of each company which will be furthered by Suntech's thin film initiatives. As part of the collaboration, Suntech will manufacture Open Energy's SolarSave(R) PV Tiles and jointly promote BIPV products in the North American market.

Expect stiff competition from this rapidly growing producer. to reiterate from a recent post: Last year, China passed the United States to become the world’s third largest producer of the cells—trailing only Germany and Japan.

Method for Cheaper Quantum Dots

Research by Michael Wong (left) and Rice University scientists at Rice's Center for Biological and Environmental Nanotechnology (CBEN), today revealed a breakthrough method for producing molecular specks of semiconductors called quantum dots, a discovery that could clear the way for better, cheaper solar energy panels.

Quantum dots interact with light in unique ways, to give off different-colored light or to create electrons and holes, due partly to their tiny size, partly to their shape and partly to the material they're made of. Rice scientists have developed a new chemical method for making four-legged cadmium selenide quantum dots, which previous research has shown to be particularly effective at converting sunlight into electrical energy.