Thin-film industry heats up

Thin-film industry heats up

by Becky Brun - 5.21.08
MAINZ, GERMANY

The second quarter of 2008 brought a flood of announcements from global companies entering the thin-film solar game.

German solar panel manufacturer Schott Solar in May launched an independent company for its thin-film photovoltaics (PV) business sector. The company expects, within the next few years, the annual production capacity at its two locations in Jena and Putzbrunn near Munich will expand from 36 to 100 megawatts. Meanwhile, DuPont (NYSE: DD) announced plans to enter the thin-film solar market with a new Hong Kong research center and a thin-film manufacturing facility in Shenzhen.

Japanese electronics manufacturer Sharp Corp. and Italy's Enel SpA, which are teaming up to build solar power plants throughout Italy that would generate a combined capacity of more than 160 megawatts, also recently announced they are considering partnering on a thin-film PV plant in Italy.

The solar industry's silicon shortage have accelerated investments in thin-film technologies. San Jose, Calif.-based Nanosolar—which is backed by private investors including Google (Nasdaq: GOOG) co-founders Sergey Brin and Larry Page, Benchmark Capital and Stanford University—shipped its first thin-film solar modules to a German power plant in December 2007 . Austin, Tex.-based Heliovolt Corp., which raised over $100 million in venture financing in 2007, reported in May it has produced thin-film solar cells with 12.2 percent conversion efficiency in a record-setting six minutes.

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HelioVolt Exceeds 12% Solar Thin Film Efficiency with Rapid, Scalable Printing Process

Industry-Leading CIGS Photovoltaic Cell Efficiency Announced at IEEE Conference

San Diego, California – May 12, 2008 – In results presented at the IEEE Photovoltaic Specialists Conference, HelioVolt Corporation announces that its proprietary FASST® reactive transfer printing process has produced thin film solar cells with 12.2 percent conversion efficiencies in a record setting six minutes. The efficiencies place HelioVolt’s Copper Indium Gallium Selenide (CIGS) devices among the highest performing solar thin film products on the market today. HelioVolt is currently optimizing FASST for further efficiency gains and scaling up the process to begin commercial manufacture of thin film solar modules and building integrated solar products.

“In the lab, CIGS is already achieving the highest efficiencies of any thin film solar material. The challenge of course is transferring that efficiency to a high throughput, high yield, low cost process capable of delivering gigawatts worth of quality commercial product,” said Dr. BJ Stanbery, CEO and founder of HelioVolt. “We view these high-performance results as an indicator of FASST’s potential to meet that need. We’re already producing CIGS devices that are comparable with the highest efficiency thin film products on the market today, and we still see plenty of room to improve from here.”

Thin film technologies aim to lower the cost of photovoltaic (PV) products by reducing the amount of material required to produce electricity from the sun. HelioVolt’s FASST process further reduces costs by manufacturing CIGS thin film products ten to one hundred times more rapidly than competitive processes including co-evaporation and two-stage selenization. Confirmed by independent testing at Colorado State University, the high-throughput printing process delivers a uniform photovoltaic cell with high conversion efficiency, or percentage of sun energy the device converts into electricity. HelioVolt’s 12.2 percent efficiency devices consisted of CIGS photovoltaic thin film layer applied to a glass substrate. The FASST process can also be used to print high efficiency, low-cost thin film material directly on glass substrates for solar modules or onto building products including architectural glass and roofing tiles.

Dr. Stanbery will present HelioVolt’s efficiency results today during his keynote address at the 33rd IEEE Photovoltaic Specialists Conference, the industry's most respected global gathering of leading scientists and engineers. Delivering a presentation entitled “Entrepreneurship on the Road from Science to Sales,” Dr. Stanbery joins David Eaglesham, vice president of technology for First Solar and Richard Swanson, president and chief technical officer of SunPower Corporation in the keynote session.

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March 30, 2008

Golden, CO, USA: NREL Sets New CIGS Thin Film Efficiency Record

Researchers at the U.S. Department of Energy’s National Renewable Energy Laboratory have moved closer to creating a thin-film solar cell that can compete with the efficiency of the more common silicon-based solar cell.

The copper indium gallium diselenide (CIGS) thin-film solar cell recently reached 19.9 percent efficiency, setting a new world record for this type of cell. Multicrystalline silicon-based solar cells have shown efficiencies as high as 20.3 percent. The energy conversion efficiency of a solar cell is the percentage of sunlight converted by the cell into electricity.

“This is an important milestone,” said NREL Senior Scientist Miguel Contreras. “The thin film people have always looked for matching silicon in performance, and we are reaching that goal.”

Researchers were able to set the world record because of improvements in the quality of the material applied during the manufacturing process, boosting the power output from the cell, Contreras said.

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