Nanosolar Aquires Manufacturing Facilities

PALO ALTO, California - December 12th, 2006 - Nanosolar Inc., a startup CIGS solar cell company, today announced that it has selected manufacturing sites located in California and in Germany. With these two new sites, Nanosolar now has the capability to utilize up to 647,000 square feet for its cell and panel manufacturing as well as research and development and regional company headquarters.

Nanosolar selected a former Cisco manufacturing facility in San Jose, California, above, as its U.S. site and a facility in the Berlin capital region as its European site.

What’s different about Nansolar’s technology is that it does not make use of silicon crystals, which is how 90% of the world’s solar energy is currently produced, rather it uses Copper Indium Gallium diSelenide (CIGS) cells, which do not depend on the short supplies of silicon that have plagued most of the solar cell industry.

The other key to their low cost is their manufacturing process. With its proprietary nanoparticle ink and fast roll-printing technology, Nanosolar owns the processes and designs to make solar electricity fundamentally less expensive. Through its latest initiative Nanosolar is currently building manufacturing operations and is on schedule to commence commercial production in 2007.

According to Nanosolar, their roll printing process is more efficient and repeatable than alternative vacuum-coating techniques - which struggle to deposit the CIGS compound with the correct atomic structure to achieve good efficiency - and enable the use of substrates that are up to ten times cheaper that the stainless steel substrates needed for vacuum deposition.

The company said the Bay Area facility would have an annual capacity of 430 megawatts once it’s fully built, churning out about 200 million cells per year, and the Berlin site would produce more than 1 million solar panels per year.

Nanosolar began pursuing its goal of affordable solar electricity in 2002, shortly after receiving seed money from Google founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin. The company’s CEO, R. Martin Roscheisen, sold his Internet company eGroups to Yahoo for $432 million in 2000.

Roscheisen says the past four years have been spent in commercial research and development, including two years of manufacturing process development and engineering. The company now believes it can mass produce a fundamentally less expensive solar cell. In Berlin, the cells will be assembled into panels that will be shaped to fit on a variety of building components. The company reportedly already has arrangements to sell the panels for use on the rooftops of commercial and residential buildings and as stand-alone power plants.

In June 2006 the company completed a Series C Preferred Stock financing, in the amount of more than $75 million, which, in conjunction with government factory subsidies it had secured, brought its total cash position (including non-debt cash equivalents) to just above $100 million sufficient to take its breakthrough photovoltaic (PV) solar electricity technology into volume production.

Nanosolar is joined by a growing list of producers of CIGS solar cells which includes, Daystar, Global Solar, HelioVolt, Honda, and Q-Cells.

Daystar is currently the largest volume produced of CIGS cells, with a capacity of 10 MW with an additional 20 MW coming on stream in 2007. Honda just announced that is building a new facility that will become operational in the fall of 2007 with an annual capacity of 27.5 megawatts.

Daystar produces its cells by vacuum sputtering with a roll to -roll process. Commercial scale production has just started on the 10 MW Gen II line.  In September it  reported that production throughput and performance objectives for cells produced on the Gen II production line were exceeding expectations, and anticipated reaching 10 percent or greater cell efficiencies by the end of this year. DayStar has ramped up its operations, and is now running three production shifts, five days a week.

This step cleared the way for their next generation of higher volume production, required for achieving their goal of Gigawatt-scale manufacturing. They are now concentrating the majority of their production program efforts and associated funding on bringing their higher volume and lower cost Gen IIITM line into commercial production. They project that this production line will be installed in their expanded manufacturing facility in New York in early 2007 which will have a target capacity of 10 MW per year. Additional production tools are planned to reach a minimum of 20 MW per year capacity by the end of 2007.  Once efficacy of their Gen IIITM product and production has been proven, they will be in a position to replicate this platform and expand their total production capacity. Their first target is to fill out their New York manufacturing facility with 100 MW of production capacity.

Comments

[Ian Fernandes]

What are the chances that nanosolar will use its own solar cells as the energy source for manufacturing solar cells? ZERO, because PV solar makes no economic sense. In fact, none of the solar panel manufacturers use solar panels to provide the energy for their manufacturing operations.

[Nucbuddy]

Given that this blog is called [i]The Energy Blog[/i], why are solar cells mentioned so often?

[Manu Sharma]

Ian-
What does using conventional power to manufacture solar cells has to do with their economic feasibility?

And fyi, Green and Gold Energy will be powering its manufacturing facilities (even encouraging its suppliers) using it's only solar power device called the SunCube.

"Nucbuddy"-
In case you missed the blurb on left sidebar of every page of this blog:
"Increasingly expensive oil and global warming are causing an energy revolution by requiring oil to be supplemented by alternative energy sources and by requiring changes in lifestyle. The Energy Blog is a place where all topics relating to The Energy Revolution are presented and form the basis for discussion."

[Manu Sharma]

correction:
using its own solar power device

[amazingdrx]

These guys do not like solar PV Manu.

I think they sense the sunset of nuclear power and it irks them. Renewables will retire nukes eventually. The economics of the situation make it inevitable.

Recent facts unearthed by a survey of rooftop solar space makes this fairly obvious to the unbiased. More than 4 times the power needs of the local grid can be obtained using roof mounted solar, employing the latest, most efficient systems, in the US southwest.

That means all but the cloudiest regions can at least supply their own power needs from roof mounted solar. And those cloudy regions can use wind and water power and import the surplus solar produced in sunnier climes.

[Stephen Boulet]

amazingdrx, is that true? Are you assuming the case of a high efficiency house or a house with average power requirements?

I think that rooftop solar makes great sense for blunting the peak power demands of the daylight hours. Also, people with rooftop systems have an evangelizing effect on their neighbors, that fosters more awareness of energy conservation. An analogy would be the changes Prius owners make to their driving habits to improve efficiency.

Kudos to nanosolar. I hope that they can drive the cost/watt way down.

Stephen

[Charles S]

"Also, people with rooftop systems have an evangelizing effect on their neighbors, that fosters more awareness of energy conservation."

It really depends. Property value sometimes trumps energy conservation. As mentioned above, not everyone like solar energy.

[Ian Fernandes]

I have no interest in nuclear or solar, only in the facts. The fact is PV solar is uneconomical - thermal solar may be another matter. If PV solar is so economical why does it need massive state subsidies? Also, the costs estimates for PV solar are vastly underestimated. For instance, all the estimates assume optimum efficiency, whereas the reality is that the actual efficiency of solar cells is typically a small percent of what is advertised even under ideal conditions. The thin film solar cells that nanosolar is building also tend to degrade in quality in a very short timespan, which requires frequent replacements. Even if you use the most beneficial cost estimates for the cost of PV solar, you will obtain a cost per kilowatt-hour that is 7 times that of coal. And of course, you can't use solar under cloudy conditions (at least not without very low efficiency) and at night. I don't mind if companies or individuals want to puruse photovoltaic power, but please don't ask the taxpayers to subsidize you.

[George]

I don't mind if companies or individuals want to puruse coal or nuclear power, but please don't ask the taxpayers to subsidize you. Oops! never mind. We already are.

[Harrison]

I thought it interesting that Nanosolar is using CIGS because silicon is in short supply. Short supply?! Sand's all over the place. You just have to smelt it. My question is how's the world's supply of Indium, Gallium, and Selenium! There's a heck of alot less of those elements than silicon. That said, we'll need all PV we can make since the nuclear power plants will be needed to make hydrogen for the lucky few of us that will get to drive around.

[BCC]

Remember:

Solar, installed at the point of use, competes with the retail price of electricity, not the production cost.

Solar tends to produce the most energy when grid loads (and prices) are highest.

Look at the experience curve (cumulative volume vs. price) for solar power. Compare with trends for retail grid electricity. Do you see an intersection in the foreseeable? I do. In Japan and Hawaii, this is called "last year".

The EROI of PV systems is at least 10 (Wikipedia-Photovoltaics says 17).

Finally, check out http://www.prometheus.org/.

Yes, solar has not achieved grid parity in the U.S. yet. The question is, is it worth our while and taxpayer $ to help PV along to this point? That's the debate; I'll start with 'yes.'

[eric blair]

If PV solar is so economical why does it need massive state subsidies? -Ian

If Oil and Gas are so economical, why the tax subsidies and subsidies in the form of military 'protection'?

If fission power is so economical, why the Price-Anderson Act to limit commecial liabilites?

Ian, for whatever reason in your head, you have an issue with the idea of Photons -> human useable energy sources. At some point EVERY energy source is the result of a nuclear fission reaction. Unless of course you think the Universe/earth is only 5000 or so years old.

When you can come back and explain all the other tax incentives on all the other power sources, not to mention account for the environmental impact of their use, your question can get answered. Until then, I've got a sand casting mold that could use some compressing. Perhaps you can come by and pound the sand?

[Harrison]

Ian, Eric, The government's been subsidizing the "next best thing" from the git go. Transportation is another example. First it was the canals. Followed by the railroads. Then the oil and automobile age came along and the railroads were dropped like a hot potatoe -- it was publicly financed roads and still is. Close behind is commercial aviation, agruably the most subsidized transportation industry going. Public financing of every airport and only Southwest can make a buck. Back to energy, about the only technology out there that not been subsidized is conventional steam coal fired power plants, probably because it's about 150 year old technology. Public opinion has to become strong enough to overpower the lobbied interests of the encumbent industries to affect change.

[Jim from The Energy Blog]

Harrison-Its not that there is a short supply of sand, its that producers of silicon ignots that is eventually turned into solar cells cannot supply enough ignots to the solar supply chain. There is a massive increase in production capacity being undertaken, but, for the most part it will not start coming on line until 2008 and at the rate that solar installations are increasing it will still not keep up with requirements. There have been several posts in this blog addressing this issue. One of the problems solar has is that to obtain the prices required for sales of solar panels to take off is on the order of 1 GW (of annual solar cell capacity per year) by one manufacturer and with the silicon supply limitations that is going to take time. Supplies of the ingredients for CIGS panels are also finite, but the quantity required for CIGS is much less due to the much thinner cells. There are currently enough supplies of CIGS ingredients to supply the present players in the market to allow them to reach GW capacity.

[Harrison]

Jim, Thank you for the reply. I realize the bottle neck with silicon is not enough carbothermic reduction furnaces and re-melters right now and that the CIGS uses a lot less raw material. My point was some of materials being used such as the CIGS inputs are pretty rare -- and foriegn sourced --- and if there is not much of it in existance, you're out of luck. Period. I haven't seen any numbers on this, so it might be a moot point, but massive use of PV will require massive amts of raw materials. You can always build more silicon furnaces though. An aside, I'm sort of amazed with what might appear as a leveling of the computer industry that more silicon metal isn't available.

[Paul Dietz]

An aside, I'm sort of amazed with what might appear as a leveling of the computer industry that more silicon metal isn't available.

A lot of silicon for PV used to come from scrap from IC manufacture.

[Harrison]

[i] A lot of silicon for PV used to come from scrap from IC manufacture. [/i]

Like the defunct AstroPower in DE used to use, but could get enough. And they had to have to make their economics work. Another poor business practice: relying on a 'failed' aspect of another industry because efforts will be made be reduce that scape.

[Paul Dietz]

AstroPower was originally going to use a 'thin film crystalline' Si, deposited on ceramic substrates from solution in molten tin, if I recall correctly. Whatever happened to that?

[Harrison]

AstroPower went bankrupt .... accounting irregularities. They were working on a process change so they wouldn't have to rely on scrap. I don't think it ever worked. GE bought the assets. Called it GE Solar and was supposedly going to make panels by some process dreamed up at their corporate R&D center. The fancy solar powered AstroPower facility was not bought be GE; the local school district bought it to be a school for something like $10 to 20 million -- so much for more neighborhood schools. But the property had some sort of environmental issue and the deal fell through. That superintent left for Florida for a big raise and left the district with a $20 million debt. The school board used the Ken Lay defense "We didn't know"

[Paul Dietz]

The thin film cystalline Si process was rather old; I had heard about it back in the 1990s. This was a process developed at U. of Delaware and I think was the one that AstroPower was originally set up to commercialize. I was wondering what ever happened to it. Clearly, if they were making ordinary crystalline PV cells, there was some problem.

[Harrison]

Paul, It was the U of D process invented by a prof there who became pres of AstroPower. They couldn't get their hands on enough scrap as per the start off post here. I believe they had to use scrap for the economics. So I'm not sure they were having tech problems, but don't know for sure.

[cheap computers]

I think the other key to their low cost is their manufacturing process.

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