Scientists at the California Institute of Technology have developed a new type of solar cell that comprise of arrays of thin silicon wires embedded in polymer substrate. The unique optical interactions between these wires provide the cells with an enhanced light absorption capability and improved internal quantum efficiency over conventional solar cells. These new cells are much cheaper to produce on account of the very low amounts of silicon needed to build them. The superior structural flexibility possessed by the silicon wire array solar cells is expected to further reduce their production cost since they can be produced using a lower-cost process.

by Naimish Upadhyay, Green Economy Post

By employing long, thin silicon wires embedded in a polymer substrate, California Institute of Technology (Caltech) scientists have developed a new type of inexpensive solar cell that not only absorb more sunlight but is also more efficient at converting it into electrical power.

Scientists at Caltech’s Resnick Institute formed an array of very thin silicon wires, each measuring between 30 and 100 microns in length and only 1 micron in diameter. While each wire was known to act independently as a high-efficiency, high-quality solar cell, the researchers found that the efficiency of light absorption increased by bringing them together in an array.

When light falls on the silicon surface, only a portion of it gets absorbed and another portion scatters. By placing the wires next to each other, however, the collective scattering interactions between them result in an enhanced absorption – up to 96 percent of incident sunlight at a single wavelength and 85 percent of total collectible sunlight. These new solar cells thus surpass the conventional light-trapping limit for absorbing materials.

The scattering interaction effect occurs despite the sparseness of the wires in the array – they cover only between 2 and 10 percent of the cell’s surface area. When the researchers first began constructing on silicon wire-array solar cells, they assumed that sunlight would be wasted on the space between wires. But while quantifying the absorption, they realized that even relatively sparse wire arrays are able to produce effective optical concentration, thus enhancing the cell efficiency.

Caltech solar arrays also show improved performance in converting the absorbed sunlight into electrical power. According to reports, between 90 and 100 percent of the photons absorbed by the silicon wires are converted into electrons – in technical terms, near-perfect internal quantum efficiency.   It is this combination of high absorption and good conversion that makes the new solar cells high-quality.

Another breakthrough achieved in this research is that in terms of area or volume, just 2 percent of the array is silicon, and the rest (98 percent) is polymer. In other words, while these arrays have the thickness of a conventional crystalline solar cell, their volume is equivalent to that of a two-micron-thick film.

Since the silicon material is an expensive component of a conventional solar cell, a cell that requires just one-fiftieth of the amount of this semiconductor will be much cheaper to produce.

The composite nature of these solar cells also means that they are flexible. Given their flexibility, the thin films can be manufactured in a roll-to-roll process – an inherently lower-cost process than one that involves brittle wafers, like those used to make conventional solar cells.

The Caltech team is now working to increase the operating voltage and the overall size of their creation in order to scale them up to the size of conventional solar cells.

The scientific team is comprised of Harry Atwater, Director of Caltech’s Resnick Intitute, Nathan Lewis, professor of Chemistry at Caltech, and graduate student Michael Kelzenberg. In addition, the co-authors of this research are postdoctoral scholars Shannon Boettcher and Joshua Spurgeon; undergraduate student Jan Petykiewicz; and graduate students Daniel Turner-Evans, Morgan Putnam, Emily Warren, and Ryan Briggs.

This research has been published in the paper “Enhanced absorption and carrier collection in Si wire arrays for photovoltaic applications,” in the February 14, 2010 advance online edition of the journal Nature Materials.

Diagram Credit: Caltech/Michael Kelzenberg

This post takes a look at five promising CIGS thin film solar photovoltaic startups at the end of a very tough year for all startups in general and especially for those in the renewable energy sector. The startups in this list are: Solyndra, Nanosolar, MiaSolé, Heliovolt and SoloPower.

by Chris de Morsella, Green Economy Post

It is a rough time to be a startup in the Solar Photovoltaic sector. The financial crisis and deep recession has not only dried up capital, but has also hit demand for solar panels, which has lead to a global supply glut and a price collapse. In this very difficult environment startups must compete with much larger established global suppliers that have factories of hundreds of megawatts each, an established customer base and well developed brand names and sales channels. In this post we look at five promising CIGS thin film Solar PV startups based in the US and try to catalog their unique strengths and accomplishments.

This global economic downturn has coincided with a huge global build up of capacity, especially in China, that has driven prices for solar panels sharply downwards. In fact manufacturers have reported that panel prices have fallen over 30% since mid-2008 a drop that has seriously undermined solar PV companies’ bottom lines. This trend is expected to continue going into 2010, with the average thin-film solar panel price expected to decline to $1.40 per watt in 2010, down 17.6% from $1.70 in 2009 and average prices for crystalline panels expected to drop to $2.00 – or even as low as $1.50 — per watt in 2010, down 20% from $2.50 this year.

It is in this uniquely challenging climate that the startups surveyed here must operate and survive in. For those that do manage to survive and drive down their own production costs the longer term prospects look good as the global market recovers and returns to a long term trend line of rapid growth of global demand.

The startup companies surveyed in this post are all based on thin film Copper-Indium-Gallium-Selenide (CIGS) technology and they have collectively raised substantial amounts of VC capital (by some measures over $1 Billion) CIGS thin film technology holds the promise of high efficiencies – above 10% and up to 14 or 15% conversion rates with 20% conversion efficiency achieved in laboratory settings. Although the materials, Indium, Gallium, Selenium are expensive they are not inherently rare (despite the rare earth moniker) unlike Tellurium, which is even rarer in the Earth’s crust than Platinum is – and is needed in cadmium-telluride thin film technology.

Solyndra

Solyndra, a thin film CIGS startup based in Fremont, CA just announced that it is planning on going public and that it hopes to raise $300 million in capital to finance the final build-out of its second factory complex designed to produce 500 megawatts per year. Solydra started production last year and now has more than $2 billion in back orders that will keep it busy for the next few years. It is also benefitting from a large $535 million loan guarantee from the DOE for building its new production facility.

However persistent concerns remain over its price/efficiency comparison vis a vis competing solar PV solutions including traditional polysilicon crystalline panels (that have come down in price) and other thin film suppliers such as First Solar – in fact, it is possible to purchase crystalline PV panels for around $2/Watt and this price is projected to drop to $1.5/Watt in 2010.

The company is aiming to penetrate and help create a market for commercial flat or low slope rooftops and has tailored its products to capture this market. The company notes that just in the US alone there are around 30 billion square feet of low slope commercial rooftop that if harnessed to provide solar power could add 150 GW of solar power capacity. This significant solar PV market segment seems to be the target niche that Solyndra is trying to and is well positioned to capture.

Solyndra’s panels employ an innovative cylindrical module design that captures sunlight across a 360-degree photovoltaic surface. These closely packed cylindrical solar tubes are capable of converting both direct, diffuse and reflected sunlight from the roof surface below into electric power and they perform optimally when mounted horizontally and packed closely together, thereby covering significantly more of the typically available roof area and producing more electricity per rooftop on an annual basis than a conventional panel installation.

The panels are lightweight and because of the slatted one inch gaps between the individual cylindrical modules on each panel they allow wind to easily blow through them significantly reducing the need to engineer anchoring or ballast in order to fix the panels on the roof. According to the company its panels can withstand hurricane force winds of up to 130 mph. Because of the inherent permeability to winds and gusts their panel’s installation costs can be substantially lower than competing panels that instead require additional anchoring and/or roof ballast in order to achieve comparable wind ratings.

In addition to the superior total light capture and better wind profile the unique cylindrical module design also helps to keep the modules operating at a lower temperature, which is important because the efficiency of solar cells drops off as temperatures in them rise. Lower operating temperatures provide higher energy output and improved reliability.

In addition to a 25-year power warranty, Solyndra’s products have received UL 1703 certification for use in North America and IEC 61730, IEC 61646 for international use.
Solyndra began commercial shipments of its solar panel systems in mid 2008. It has steadily been increasing sales volume and revenue every since. It reported revenues of $58.8 million in the nine months ended Oct 3, up from roughly the same period a year ago. Solyndra reported a net loss of $119.8 million, compared with a $179.8 in the roughly comparable year-ago period. It attributes these losses – as it said in a filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission — to its continued investment in adding manufacturing capacity.

Nanosolar

Nanosolar, a solar PV startup founded in 2002 and headquartered in San Jose, CA has developed a unique roll to roll thin film production process based on a nano-scale CIGS ink that is wet printed onto a conductive aluminum foil substrate. Large capital savings and cost efficiencies are realized by using this CIGS-on-Aluminum stack.

This last September (2009) Nanosolar completed its European panel-assembly factory located in Luckenwalde near Berlin. When operated 24X7 the highly automated facility will sustain a production rate of one panel every ten seconds, which equates to an annual production capacity of 640MW. Nanosolar has also begun serial production in its San Jose, California, cell production factory, which will supply its panel assembly plant in Germany. As Nanosolar’s customers attain project financing from commercial banks for the new panel product, the company will increase its monthly production rate to deliver on its contractual customer commitments totaling $4.1 billion to date.

Nanosolar is betting on its proprietary production process and it does seem to have developed and quite possible perfected an interesting and unique approach to CIGS thin film production that avoids costly clean rooms (needed for high-vacuum deposition) and minimizes the wastage of costly and rare materials. The process is based off of an aluminum substrate instead of the usually employed molybdenum conductive layer that is vacuum sputtered onto a glass substrate. Printing is the fastest and simplest method conceivable for depositing a thin film of material onto a base and Nanosolar is betting that by mastering this technique it can become the CIGS thin film champion – in a race with many contenders.

The results seem pretty impressive so far. Solar foil efficiencies, for Nanosolar cells as high as 16.4% have been independently verified by the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) and their first-generation production is capable of delivering 11% panels. Their panels have attained IEC 61646 & 61730 product certification. And they seem to have worked out the roll to roll mass production process and are scaling up to mass production.

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MiaSolé

MiaSolé, a Silicon Valley startup with headquarters in Santa Clara, CA that has maintained a very low profile in themarket is a pioneer in the development of Copper Indium Gallium Selenide (CIGS) thin film photovoltaic products. MiaSolé is the first CIGS thin film producer to have its modules to be certified by Underwriters Laboratory (UL) to the three most critical certification standards (UL 1703 and IEC 61646 and 61730). The National Renewable Energy Laboratory has confirmed that their panels convert sunlight into electricity with an efficiency of 10.2 percent.

Critically the company has begun its first commercial shipments to 30 customers located in the EU and the US. The company now has a factory with an annual production capacity of 60 MW and is in the process of expanding this up to 140 MW of capacity.

The upside potential for future growth for MiaSolé is underlined by the amount of VC funding it has managed to obtain, raising a cool $300 million since its founding in 2001. Some very savvy and well known venture capitalists such as Kleiner Perkins are amongst its VC funders.

However this is a very challenging environment for all startups including even well funded ones such as MiaSolé and its longevity is by no means secure.

Heliovolt

Heliovolt, a CIGS thin film solar PV startup founded in 2001 and based in Austin Texas has raised $101 million for its Series B round in 2007 and has recently opened a 20MW capacity panel production facility also located in Austin and the company aims to begin shipping products in 2010. Heliovolt is seeking to differentiate itself from other thin film CIGS startups with an innovative two staged thin film manufacturing process, based on its research into the fundamental physics of the CIGS semiconductor material that reduces capital costs, lowers energy used in manufacturing and promises a higher throughput.

The company’s FASST manufacturing process produces high-quality large-grain CIGS crystals using a unique combination of low-cost ink-based or Physical Vapor Deposition (PVD) based nanoengineered precursor thin films and a reactive transfer printing method. Reactive transfer is a two-stage process relying on chemical reaction between two separate precursor films to form CIGS, one deposited on the substrate and the other on a printing plate in the first stage. In the second stage, these precursors are brought into intimate contact and rapidly reacted under pressure in the presence of an electrostatic field while heat is applied. The use of two independent thin films provides the benefits of independent composition and flexible deposition technique optimization, and eliminates pre-reaction prior to the synthesis of CIGS. High quality CIGS with large grains on the order of several microns, and of preferred crystallographic orientation, are formed in just several minutes based on compositional and structural analysis by XRF, SIMS, SEM and XRD. Cell efficiencies of 14% and module efficiencies of 12% have been achieved using this method. When atmospheric pressure deposition of inks is utilized for the precursor films, the approach additionally provides further reduced capital equipment cost, lower thermal budget, and higher throughput.

SoloPower

SoloPower, a startup based in San Jose, CA manufactures thin-film solar photovoltaic (PV) cells and modules that are based on Copper-Indium-Gallium-Selenide (CIGS) technology. SoloPower is seeking to differentiate itself from other CIGS thin film startups, such as MiaSolé, Solyndra by its proprietary and innovative electrochemical process for laying the thin film onto a thin, flexible foil substrate in a high throughput, roll-to-roll process.

The company claims that by using an electroplating process to bond the CIGS thin film (and presumably also the bottom and top conductor layers as well) onto the substrate that this allows it to utilize nearly 100% of the chemicals, a higher material utilization rate than for other competing CIGS thin film solar processes like evaporation, sputtering or printing.

It has raised a few hundred million in financing to ramp up manufacturing of its thin-film solar cells. However its prospects are clouded by an ongoing lawsuit by the founder and ousted CEO Homayoun Talieh alleging that several of the company’s board members and a handful of investors quest for short-term, personal benefits has driven the company’s value down by $300 million in just months.

The suit alleges that Hudson tried to persuade Talieh to enter into a $376.5 million purchase agreement with the 3M Co. and Hudson for material used for flexible substrate solar power generation. The agreement would have funneled $80 million in cash and warrants to Hudson but been “disastrous” for SoloPower, according to the lawsuit, which states the deal would have drained cash and resources from the business.

sThe manufacturers of the equipment and production lines that are needed to produce solar cells and modules are an important segment of the overall value chain in the solar PV sector as a whole. Who are these US based solar photovoltaic equipment manufacturers and how are they fairing in the global recession of 2009?

by Chris de Morsella, Green Economy Post

The manufacturers of the equipment and production lines that are needed to produce solar cells and modules are an important segment of the overall value chain in the solar PV sector as a whole. These companies are making a wide variety of equipment that finds use in the manufacture of solar cells, ranging from tradition semi-conductor manufacturing equipment that has grown out of the computer semi-conductor industry, to more exotic things like specialized inkjet printers and lasers.

Who are these US based solar photovoltaic equipment manufacturers and how are they fairing in the global recession of 2009? We list six important and also interesting US headquartered players in this market some like Applied Materials are global giants while others are less known,but seemed to be offering critical capital equipment in this rapidly evolving sector.

For a list of the four big US Solar Cell manufacturers see our related post in this series: Four Big Established US Solar PV Companies You Should Know About

The list of US based solar PV capital equipment suppliers begins below.

Applied Materials

Applied Materials, located in Santa Clara, CA is a large multibillion dollar manufacturer and developer of capital equipment, services and software products used in the fabrication of semiconductor products including a product line for solar PV for which it offers production solutions for crystalline silicon, flexible PV and thin film silicon solar modules.

Applied Materials is seeking to leverage its four decades of thin film on silicon experience acquired in the semiconductor sector to the manufacturing of solar modules. It is the world’s largest supplier of crystalline silicon (c-Si) manufacturing systems and also offers advanced hardware and software automation solutions to maximize these systems efficiency.

A few of the other solar related products it manufactures and sells are an automated, glass-in/panel-out manufacturing line for amorphous silicon based thin film PV panel production; high precision multi-layer screen printing technology for c-Si cells enabling the fabrication of advanced contact structures and other multi-layered

Applied Materials recently announced (on 11/6/09) that it has acquired substantially all the assets, including the intellectual property, of Advent Solar, Inc., a developer of advanced technology for crystalline silicon (c-Si) PVs. This acquisition is expected to complement Applied Material’s portfolio of solar PV technologies and enhance its leadership in the c-Si equipment market.

GT Solar

GT Solar, headquartered in Merrimack, NH is a global market leader in polysilicon reactors and converters, and multi-crystalline furnaces that are essential technologies for the production of polysilicon and multi-crystalline ingots, the key materials used to produce solar cells and panels. It does not directly manufacture solar cells itself, but rather is a leading manufacturer of some of the critical equipment, needed to manufacture them. The company’s principal products are directional solidification systems, chemical vapor deposition reactors as well as photovoltaic wafer fabrication machinery. GT Solar currently does a majority of its business in Asia, primarily in China. Its top clients include many prominent global solar products suppliers.

GT Solar ended its 2009 fiscal year with record revenue of $541 million. However fiscal second-quarter profit declined 66%.

There is concern that the company will face difficulties selling its manufacturing equipment to a sector that is in the midst of a global over supply crisis that is hurting margins for everyone and is driving many weaker players under.

Piper Jaffray analyst Jesse Pichel said in a note to clients, explaining why he was downgrading GT Solar that “We speculate that many (polysilicon) start-ups in China could shut down, and it will be difficult for SOLR to get new bookings or realize its contracted backlog.”

Spire Corporation

Spire Corporation, headquartered in Bedford, MA is a leading global solar company providing capital equipment to manufacture PV modules & cells, turnkey solar manufacturing lines and PV systems. Spire, which just recently celebrated its fortieth year in business, is one of the oldest solar equipment manufacturers in the world and has over 200 customers in nearly fifty countries around the world. The company pioneered the solar manufacturing equipment industry and continues to be the choice for many photovoltaic module manufacturing companies around the world.

One of the market segments Spire is currently focusing on is complete turnkey factories that can range in solar PV cell production output from 12 MW to 200 MW. It has achieved industry recognition for this being awarded the Solar Industry Award for “Best Turnkey Solar Factory Provider” for 2009 by Solar, a PV Management Magazine.

It has reported revenue for the first nine months of this year ending on September 30, 2009 of $50.1 million an increase of 9% over the same period last year. In other recent news Spire Solar Inc. recently received the green light to build a $42 million solar cell manufacturing plant in Hudson, N.H. that is expected to add 150 jobs.

Coherent

Founded in 1966, Coherent, Inc., which is headquartered in the Silicon Valley in Santa Clara, CA, is a world leader in providing superior laser reliability and performance. It offers a range of laser based process tools for use in the manufacturing process of solar cells.

Lasers are used primarily during the cell production stage of crystalline-silicon solar manufacturing. Lasers are also used in the manufacture of thin-film panels to ‘pattern’ the layers during the deposition stages. Lasers have been the preferred technology for thin-film patterning and are the area where lasers are most commonly used in solar PV manufacturing and where they have the highest visibility levels.

The company has recently released two new turnkey process tools for use in crystalline-silicon (c-Si) solar cell manufacturing production that provide a simple route for solar manufacturers to introduce laser processing for applications to enable high-efficiency cell performance. Applications include edge isolation, dielectric ablation for diffusion or plating masking, laser-assisted selective-emitter formation including dopant diffusion, emitter or metal wrap-through, and etch-barrier ablation for wet chemical surface texturing of multi c-Si wafers.

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Amerimade Technology Inc.

Amerimade Technology Inc., located in Livermore, CA manufactures manual wet stations for early development of break-through silicon, CIS-thin-film, Silicon/GaAs technologies as well as fully automated as well as wet benches fully automated large batch processing systems for mainstream production applications. Wet processing equipment is used for the cleaning, etching, plating, stripping and polishing steps in the manufacture of solar cells amongst other things.

Trident Solar

Trident, a division of ITW (Illinois Tool Works Inc.) and a leading designer, manufacturer and marketer of piezoelectric impulse ink jet printheads and inks has launched “Trident Solar,” a new division dedicated exclusively to solar photovoltaic inkjet technologies.

Trident has been a leading producer of industrial piezoelectric inkjet printheads and inks for 30 years, and has been involved in the solar PV inkjet market for a few years. It currently produces a dedicated solar PV inkjet that features a 256-nozzle printhead with durable, serviceable design and rugged stainless steel construction which allows for non-contact printing of a wide variety of acid and alkaline etchants and conductive metals for direct write, printable solar photovoltaic production applications.

Inkjet technology, such as provided by Trident Solar can be many times less expensive than lithographic screen printing, while simultaneously providing higher print resolution. Inkjet technology offers several distinct advantages: because printing is finely controlled, it helps minimize the waste of costly materials; digital inkjet printing is a non-contact process, so less breakage and resulting scrap occurs; and because of the fast achievable print speeds, it is also ideal for roll-to-roll applications.

Conclusion

Hopefully we have provided a good view of some of the key US headquartered solar equipment manufacturers including heavy weights such as Applied Material of Santa Clara, CA, but also of some interesting companies that one would not think of as being involved in supplying the solar PV manufacturing sector with key equipment, such as a laser manufacturing company in the Silicon Valley or a division of an old established industrial company in Illinois.

This is not an exhaustive list by any means and it is intentionally focused in on US based capital equipment manufacturers; we intend to cover non-US manufacturers that are active in the North American markets in another post. If you feel we have missed any important US solar PV equipment suppliers we welcome your comments. As we get better information and as the sector evolves we will continue to update this list. It is a rapidly changing landscape and new processes and techniques are rapidly coming out of the laboratories and R&D centers and into ramp up into wider scale production of photovoltaic modules.

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Survey of large US headquartered solar PV manufacturers with a focus on how they are doing in this difficult economic climate of 2009. Comapnies surveyed are: First Solar, SunPower, Evergreen Solar and United Solar Ovonic (Uni-Solar).

by Chris de Morsella, Green Economy Post

In this survey we are looking at the large US headquartered solar PV manufacturers with a view to examine how they are doing in this difficult economic climate. As basically anyone knows, who has not been cloistered away meditating in some cave, 2009 has been a very tough year for pretty much everyone.

Solar companies have been especially hard hit by this global recession because, in the lead up to this recession there was a massive build out of solar PV production capacity – especially by Chinese manufacturers — that would have probably lead to a situation of over capacity in the best of cases. As a result the slacking off of global demand caused by the dry up of the capital markets, recessionary mindset and financial woes of potential consumers of PV products has lead to a severe global glut of PV modules and a global collapse in prices. This may be good for those consumers who have cash in hand, but it has driven many solar companies around the world to the brink, with some notable exceptions.

Not that long ago the US used to dominate the world in solar cell manufacturing and sales, but no longer. While, by some measures First Solar has rocketed to a position of global leadership the US has only 2 – yes just 2 — players in the global top 20 solar PV firms, according to a recent ranking of the top 20 global companies by iSuppli a well known market research company in the semiconductor and solar PV sectors. Companies were ranked according to production in 2007 and by announced production capacity in 2010. The only two US firms that mae it into this top twenty list are First Solar and SunPower.

For related reading check out our post Six US Based Solar PV Equipment Manufacturers to Watch to read about six US manufacturers of the specialized equipment and production lines that are needed to produce solar cells and modules and that are an important segment of the overall value chain of the solar PV sector as a whole.

The list of the big four US solar PV cell manufacturers.

First Solar

First Solar, Inc., a solar energy company headquartered in Tempe, Arizona designs and manufactures solar modules using a proprietary cadmium-telluride thin film semiconductor technology. The driving force behind its continued profitability and growth is because it has achieved perhaps the lowest manufacturing cost per watt in the industry an enviable position to be in especially in a climate of collapsing solar module prices due to current global oversupply. The company now claims it can produce solar cells at a low cost of $.85/watt for the second quarter of 2009, after also breaking the $1 per watt cost barrier in 2008. This represents a continuing reduction on its production costs and cements its position as the world’s current low cost supplier. First Solar is has grown to become one of the biggest players in the global PV manufacturing sector and is expected to produce an estimated 1,169MW of new modules in 2009 a large increase in output from its 2008 production level of 716MW.

The company prospects continue to rise on recently announced news that it has recently signed a Cooperation Framework Agreement with the Chinese government that takes another step towards the realization of the world’s largest solar power plant – planned to reach a final 2GW of generating capacity and completed in four phases by 2019. The plant is located in the autonomous region of Inner Mongolia, China.

First Solar has grown and is breathing down the neck of Q-Cells of German and Sharp Electronics of Japan for the mantle of the world’s largest solar cell manufacturer with all of them increasing production beyond 1GW/year. On October 15th 2009 First Solar also became the first pure-play renewable energy company to be added to the S&P 500 index.

There is an ominous dark cloud hanging over this rising star’s long term prospects that is related to the specific thin film technology that First Solar has mastered and is riding to success. The element Tellurium essential for First Solar’s cadmium-telluride thin film semiconductor technology is extremely rare in the crust of planet earth. In fact is thirty seven times rarer in earth’s crust than Platinum is where it comprises just one part per billion. For each GW of production of its thin film solar cells First Solar will require more than one hundred tons of Tellurium a figure that is close to the total global production figures (estimates range from a few hundred to around 500 MT of refined Tellurium per year global production).

To read more about First Solar breaking the key psychological price barrier of $1 per watt production cost, see our post: Cost to Produce Solar Cells Brought Below $1 per Watt

SunPower

SunPower, a solar PV energy company located in San Jose, CA, designs, manufactures and delivers high-performance solar electric systems worldwide for residential, commercial and utility-scale power plant customers. Their high-efficiency solar cells and solar panels generate up to 50 percent more power than conventional solar technologies

The company’s stock has recently been buffeted by news that it may have to restate its financial results for last year and this year because its manufacturing operations in the Philippines appeared to have over and under reported expenses in 2008 and the first three quarters of 2009.

However this is a large solar energy company with a current market cap of over $2 billion and has a deserved reputation for producing high quality modules. In addition its third quarter (2009) revenue was $466 million, compared with $298 in the second quarter, which is a sign that the worst may be over. SunPower will weather this current accounting tempest and is well positioned to survive the current global shakeout and continue to grow in the future. SunPower is hoping to join the GW plus club of manufactures in 2010.

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Evergreen Solar

Evergreen Solar, located in Marlboro, MA and founded in 1994, is a vertically integrated solar PV company that develops, manufactures and markets solar PV products. Key to Evergreen’s success is its patented String Ribbon™, low-cost wafer manufacturing technology, developed at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology that uses significantly less polysilicon than conventional processes.

The company has benefited from substantial subsidies from the state of Massachusetts under the Gov. Deval Patrick administration receiving $58.6 million in state funding assistance to open its new factory at Devens, MA last year.

Evergreen announced on Nov. 4 (2009) that it would be shifting its solar panel assembly work from its Devens, Mass. based facility to a new plant located in Wuhan, China, putting hundreds of local jobs in jeopardy. Evergreen says this move is necessary as a cost-cutting effort due to the current economic climate in the US and a global oversupply problem that has been hurting the entire sector. The Devens facility will continue to make solar wafers and cells. This announcement has understandably caused considerable public outrage in its home state, especially considering the very generous state subsidies that Evergreen benefited from in order to open its Devens facility last year.

Major Wall Street analysts have expressed concern about Evergreen’s liquidity and said the company may have to find new capital soon. The company is driving to reduce its manufacturing costs and has claimed that it has succeeded in bringing the total manufacturing cost to $2.24 per watt, down 17% from $2.70 per watt for the second quarter. Wafer manufacturing cost was approximately $0.75 per watt, down from $0.85 per watt in the second quarter.

United Solar Ovonic (Uni-Solar)

United Solar Ovonic, located in Auburn Hills, Michigan is a wholly-owned subsidiary of Energy Conversion Devices Inc. Ovonics parent company Energy Conversion Devices Inc., is headquartered in Rochester Hills, MI. Scientist-entrepreneur Stanford Ovshinsky founded Energy Conversion Devices, Inc. (ECD) in 1960.

It manufactures and sells solar modules based on a proprietary thin-film triple junction amorphous silicon technology. The PV (solar) laminates it produces are flexible, lightweight and rugged and the company claims that they generate up to 20 percent more electricity than conventional crystalline products for the same investment. They are also easy to install and can be rolled on and bonded to suitable roofing base materials in an easy and simple non- labor intensive operation.

In recent news Uni-Solar has been selected by Recurrent Energy, San Francisco, Calif., to deliver 4.8MWp of solar generating systems for eight separate building rooftops at ProLogis Park Sant Boi in Barcelona and ProLogis Park Alcala in Madrid, Spain.

However Energy Conversion Devices Inc., Ovonic’s parent holding company’s stock is struggling and has fallen 55% so far this year breaking a 52 week low. The market’s perception is that the company has quickly gone from a solar industry cost leader to inefficient laggard and faces a challenging near-term effort to reach cost parity with competitors. This perception is borne out by recent news that Uni-Solar plans to lay off 400 employees, or 20 percent of its workforce. The company seems to be struggling to weather the economic downturn

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The California Public Utilities Commission gave its approval yesterday to the project giving it the green light to proceed.

by Chris de Morsella, Green Economy Post

California’s biggest utility, PG&E, is seeking approval from state regulators for a power purchase agreement with Solaren Corp., a Southern California company that has contracted to deliver 200 megawatts of clean, renewable power over a 15 year period, beginning in 2016. Power from out of this world, that is.

UPDATE: The California Public Utilities Commission gave its approval yesterday to the project giving it the green light to proceed. Now the ball is in Solaren’s court. Can it raise the capital to get it off the ground — literally in this case. Gary Spirnak the co-founder of Solaren has a space industry background having worked at Boeing Satellite Systems and previously at Hughes & Space Communications. Now armed with the PUCs approval they hope to close funding for $100M — the amount that they will need to to validate their designs in the lab. Will Solaren be able to prove its many skeptics wrong? However this turns out it puts an interesting twist on solar power and this story has just moved on to its next chapter.

Now, if Solaren could just get its website launched — it is presumably under construction — that might be the next small step for their giant leap.

Solaren says it plans to generate the power using solar panels in earth orbit, then convert it to radio frequency energy for transmission to a receiving station in Fresno County.  From there, the energy will be converted to electricity, and fed into PG&E’s power grid.

At first glance, this may seem more suitable in a science fiction story than an actual power purchase agreement.  However,  PG&E has not suddenly lost it’s institutional mind and become a corporate space cadet.  First off, PG&E is not investing in or funding this effort in any way; it is only announcing an agreement to purchase said power — should Solaren be able to deliver it by 2016.  This power purchase agreement will certainly help Solaren get the large up front funding it needs at very little actual risk to PG&E.

There are some compelling arguments that favor space based solar power solutions.   A space based solar collection facility located in high geostationary orbit will almost always be in the sun and will rarely find itself veiled by the Earth’s shadow — a condition we call night time. As such, it can function as a base load power system, and will not suffer the problems of intermittent availability that earth based solar power must face, limited by the day/night cycle, and by weather and seasonal conditions.  Furthermore, the power can be beamed to a location that is convenient for the existing grid, and not too remote from the power markets.  The problem of remote location is one of the drawbacks of large scale renewable energy harvesting farms, although certainly not an issue for solar power on the rooftop — directly over the consumption node it is servicing.  Also, at least for now,  space in space is free.

Now for a necessary splash of cold water.  The launch costs are so extremely high per unit of mass delivered up into high orbit that unless this cost comes way down,  I find it hard to believe that the project can be completed in an economic fashion.  Launching a one liter bottle of water into low earth orbit currently will now set you back more than $10,000.  I would be curious to see more details on how Solaren plans to fund the upfront launch costs for delivering the many payloads of solar panels and microwave beaming parabola and sundry structures into a high geostationary orbit.

Still, in all, it is an interesting idea, and if they succeed, Californian’s may be getting some of their electricity beamed down to them from outer space.

U.S. Energy Secretary Steven Chu announced in Washington that the Department of Energy (DOE) will provide up to $750 million in new funding from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act to help accelerate the development of renewable energy generation projects. This funding will be targeted to cover the cost of loan guarantees for renewable energy projects and could support as much as $4 to 8 billion in lending to eligible projects, and the Department will invite private sector participation to accelerate the financing of these renewable energy projects.

“A renewable energy economy is a true opportunity to create new jobs, reinvigorate America’s competitiveness and support the president’s goal of doubling renewable energy in the United States,” said Secretary Chu. “American innovation can be the catalyst that jumps starts a new clean energy Industrial Revolution.”

This new funding is targeted towards promoting the rapid deployment of renewable energy projects such as wind, solar, biomass, geothermal, hydropower as well as leading edge biofuels projects and the related manufacturing facilities, electric power transmission projects that commence construction before September 30, 2011. The goal of this newly announced program is to help renewable energy projects using existing mainstream technologies get funded and is not designed to promote the development of frontier technologies. The program is geared towards boosting the flow of capital into the existing renewable energy sector projects from private sector financial institutions.

To facilitate this process the DOE announced the creation of a new Financial Institution Partnership Program (FIPP). This program is comprised of a streamlined set of standards designed to expedite DOE’s loan guarantee underwriting process and leverage private sector expertise and capital for the efficient and prudent funding of eligible renewable energy and related projects. The FIPP will seek to leverage the human and financial capital of private sector financial institutions by accelerating the loan application process while balancing risk between DOE and private sector partners participating in the program.

This first solicitation under the new program will seek loan guarantee applications for conventional renewable energy generation projects, such as wind, solar, biomass, geothermal and hydropower. Past solicitations for renewable energy generation projects have focused on loan guarantee applications using new or innovative technologies not in general use in the marketplace.

Under this first FIPP solicitation, proposed borrowers and project sponsors do not apply directly to DOE but instead work with financial institutions satisfying the qualifications of an eligible lender, which may apply directly to DOE to access a loan guarantee. The solicitation invites applications from eligible lenders for partial, risk-sharing loan guarantees from DOE. The guarantee percentage will be no more than 80% of the maximum aggregate principal and interest during a loan term, and the project debt must obtain a credit rating of at least ‘BB’ or an equivalent with a nationally recognized credit rating agency.

Last year – 2008 — was the biggest year in the history of solar, to many observers and industry insiders 2009, so far, seems like a brutal hangover from all that exuberance. It is so bad that some gleeful voices sniping from the sidelines are prognosticating the death of the solar energy sector itself; the pain is real — by some measures 2009 has been the worst year in the young solar Photovoltaic (PV) sectors history. In fact, global revenue for panels is expected to drop by nearly 20 percent in 2009, as oversupply causes prices to drop, according to iSuppli Corp. a globally respected market research firm with expertise in the semiconductor and solar PV sectors.

What we are seeing now is the result of the unprecedented ramp up of production capacity fueled in part by the entry of many new players into the solar PV production space drawn by the explosive growth rates of the last eight years. This pile on of new supply was bound to lead to a period of oversupply and in fact it has. Already in 2008 oversupply was an issue and it has only worsened in 2009.

This natural cyclical build up of capacity – outstripping demand (at the production and market pricing points) – has been made more severe and more painful in 2009 because it has been coupled with the after effects of the most severe financial crash in most people’s memory. Solar is a very capital intensive market – and it requires the capital up front. It is front loaded in terms of capital expenditures – recouping investments over the long term as it churns out electricity without needing to purchase fossil fuels. 2009 was the perfect storm… a very large over supply of modules hit the market beginning in 2008 and continuing in 2009, just as the financial crisis dried up venture and other capital funding markets.

Market Predictions

iSuppli predicts that the 2009 PV market will shrink to $12.9 billion down from $15.9 billion in 2008 as prices for modules collapse down to the $2.50 to $2.75 per watt range, from $4.20 per watt. It is this collapse in solar module prices that is driving the overall collapse in revenue and is literally killing off the weaker suppliers, with many of them on life support and in increasing danger of going under.

To put this in some perspective, even with the drop in revenue 2009 will see more GW of new added PV capacity than any year before it, including in 2008. In fact – iSuppli has projected that 4.2GW of additional capacity will be added in 2009, up from 3.8GW in 2008. This is a respectable increase of almost 10%.. In this same period, however, production capacity has increased by a whopping 62% to 11.1GW in 2009 up from 7.7 GW of production capacity in 2008. It does not take a rocket scientist to see how this has lead to a price collapse.

Dr. Henning Wicht, senior director and principal analyst, photovoltaics for iSuppli made the following observation, “Due to the political impetus to save fossil energy resources, both for carbon dioxide emissions and to prepare the future energy infrastructure, solar demand has been booming. Attractive margins and excellent long-term prospects have caused of flood of new competitors to enter the PV market, spurring oversupply throughout the value chain, from the essential raw material polysilicon to complete solar panels. Economies of scale matter in the solar industry. Aiming for the lowest production costs by using large-scale manufacturing, companies have expanded their production from year to year. But the race to larger manufacturing scale comes to an end when the production is not sold anymore.”

Who Is Being Hit Hardest and Whom Is Doing Better

The report goes on to state that almost all crystalline silicon suppliers will be hard hit by a sharp drop off in revenues through 2009. Most of them will post losses for the year. Newer entrants into the market that have invested heavily in new module and wafer production facilities will be especially hard hit as is to be expected as the large oversupply causes a price collapse for these commodities.

Fully integrated solar companies that are more able to reduce margins – spreading them out over a large value chain – will fare better.

Some companies, such as SunPower, that have established a good brand and a reputation for quality will do better. SunPower, Sharp and Q-Cell will also benefit from having invested in installation firms. This should help them maintain higher than average pricing in 2009.

Could 2009 Ironically Be Seen as the Year of the Rise of First Solar

Some solar PV manufacturing firms, most notably First Solar are not only riding this perfect storm out, but are in fact doing quite well out of it and rapidly increasing their market share.

First Solar may be on its way to grabbing for the first time the leadership mantle as the world’s largest manufacturer of solar PV modules eclipsing its more established rivals Suntech, Sharp Electronics and Q-Cells (each of which has between a 7 and 9% market share) iSuppli has predicted that First Solar will grab a 13% market share in 2009.

First Solar is advantaged by being a low cost producer and has achieved the milestone of beating the $1 per watt figure. For more on this story see our article: Cost to Produce Solar Cells Brought Below $1 per Watt

Outlook for 2010 and Beyond

In the second half of 2010, PV panel revenue is widely expected to return to the past pattern of strong growth as the demand picture improves, some weak players are eliminated and the drop in prices hits bottom. The current PV module oversupply glut will work its way out and as this happens profit margins will improve for the surviving players.

iSuppli predicts panel revenue will rebound in 2010 and rise to $17.8 billion, up 38.2 percent from 2009 and predicts that revenue will rise by another 11.1 percent in 2011 and by 29.1 percent in 2012.

Distributed energy systems can range from the micro sized do it yourself systems being installed on rooftops and on hilltops to small scale systems ranging up to around 20MW (megawatts) of capacity, although it must be understood that this is a pretty fuzzy boundary. The defining characteristic of distributed energy systems is that they generate energy close to the point of use where that energy will be consumed; hence the admittedly fuzzy 20MW upper boundary for their size. If an energy generation facility becomes much larger than this it produces far too much power to be consumed locally (except in a few rare exceptional cases where large industrial consumers are nearby). The excess power must then be transmitted to distant markets and the energy system can no longer be described as being a distributed energy system.

Besides being relatively small scale distributed energy systems are usually understood to be powered by renewable energy sources such as solar or wind, but also biomass or other systems such as tidal, wave and geothermal and that to put it another way they do not rely on fossil energy supplies. Many however also include micro-turbines, fuel cells and the more traditional gas or diesel powered backup generators in this category by virtue of their small scale.

Some Advantages of Distributed Power Systems

Distributed electric energy systems offer many advantages over the current energy topology of a smal number of massive thermoelectric fossil fueled power producing plants that feed a vast grid with essentially a uni-directional flow of current through a whole series of transformer sub-stations that both step voltage up then step it down along the way to the consumer at the far end of the very long pipe.

• It is suited to regions currently lacking well developed and maintained grid infrastructures. This is the case in much of the less developed world, but also includes remote areas in the US and other industrialized nations.
• By off-loading demand from the grid it can reduce or avoid the necessity to build new transmission/distribution lines or upgrade existing ones.
• They can avoid the line loss associated with transmitting electricity over long distances and in the process of stepping voltage up and then down in transformers in order to put power onto these very high voltage transmission systems and to pull it down off from them before being able to use it.
• Because of its smaller scale it avoids the large increment problems faced by large scale utility sized plants of Gigawatt scale. In other words it can more smoothly fit actual current use patterns and can be installed in easy small increments as needed and does not tie up massive long term capital for a single project.
• Because it is easy to bring small scale distributed systems on and off line when compared to large thermoelectric plants they can function as backup and emergency power sources and help prevent blackouts and brownouts.
• Distributed systems (such as hydro, or biomass, but also micro-turbines, fuel cells etc.) can be configured to produce power during peak load times when the grid is under its greatest stress and energy is most costly.
• Distributed systems are well suited for and promote the diversification of power supplies, which makes them particularly suitable for renewable energy sources.
• By virtue of their smaller scale distributed energy systems are more suitable for co-generation. Co-generation uses the waste heat from a one process, such as power generation, to provide space heating for buildings. Small biomass, micro-turbine, fuel cell, or combined solar facilities are naturally suited to also being sources of co-generated heat. Heat that would otherwise need to be produced by some other means.
• Last, but not least, distributed electric energy systems can help to make our country more secure. Because they are widely dispersed and do not depend on a small number of central facilities they are much less vulnerable to disruption – either through accident or hostile action. Distributed electric energy systems are inherently more survivable than a centralized grid relying on a very small number of fixed facilities and key transmission nodes.

The System We Have

Our current electric energy infrastructure is characterized by massive thermoelectric plants, mostly fired by burning mountains of coal but also by the heat released through nuclear fission. These plants are typically massive driven by economies of scale to reach up into the Gigawatt capacity order of magnitude. Our entire grid system is characterized by this centralized power infrastructure. Of course it is true that a small amount of energy comes from renewable sources– around 6% of the total electric energy generation comes from (often massive) hydro-electric plants and currently a little less than 1% from wind power — but our energy infrastructure is mostly dominated by massive thermoelectric plants with coal burning plants comprising almost half of the nations electric energy generation capacity.

This has lead to a grid structure of correspondingly massive scale and of a similarly centralized nature. But will it always be so? Are we destined to continue down a path of massive power plants feeding a highly integrated grid with power that needs to stepped up to very high voltages for long distance transmission then transformed down in stages until it finally reaches the industrial facility, home, or commercial building where it is ultimately consumed. Is this way of doing things really suited to the nimble and diversified future that awaits us just around the corner of the curve of diminishing fossil energy reserves and spiking costs as increasingly marginal fossil energy supplies are developed to feed our future energy needs?

Recent Trends Seem to Indicate that Distributed Power is Finally Taking Off

Distributed power may finally be taking off, driven by the continued rapid drop in the cost of renewable energy sources, by the increasing incidence of brownouts and blackouts in an over-taxed grid, by the inability of the grid to adapt to future needs, by a desire amongst many to exert more control over their how they get their power and by a growing awareness of global warming.

Solar Energy Sector

A recent report by Pike Research that is focused on the growth in small scale distributed solar photovoltaic power systems predicts that the global market for these systems, which is currently at $30 billion per year (2008 figures) will grow to almost $60 billion by 2013. That is a compound annual growth rate of 22%. Of all the opportunities in PV, Pike Research finds that the most compelling growth potential lies in decentralized electricity generation, whether in small rooftop or large commercial installations. Solar PV has the advantage of being truly modular, which makes it particularly well suited for distributed energy systems.

In addition the modular small scale solar thermal systems suitable for distributed power systems are also taking off. For example Sterling Energy Systems a solar company based in Scottsdale, AZ has recently released an the production design of its SunCatcher system that is a solar thermal dish system that uses concentrated solar energy to run a high efficiency sterling engine. This system has been in development for ten years. Each dish unit can generate 25 kilowatts of energy and has been certified by Sandia National Laboratories as having the highest sun‐to‐grid energy conversion in the world; last year one of the original SunCatchers set a new solar-to-grid system conversion efficiency record by achieving a 31.25 percent net efficiency rate, toppling the old 1984 record of 29.4

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Stirling Energy Systems in partnership with Tessera Solar are building a 1.5MW field Peoria, Arizona. The modular nature of these types of systems makes it a good fit for smaller scale and more widely dispersed distributed solar generating systems, because they are easily scaled to fit current energy market conditions.

The Wind Energy Sector

According to a the Small Wind Global Market Study a study on the market for small wind turbines from The American Wind Energy Association (AWEA), the U.S. market for small wind turbines, which it defines as those with capacities between 20and 100 kilowatts (kW), grew by 78 percent in 2008. It must be said that the installed base is still very small – the total new capacity is a little over 17 megawatts (MW) – however the rate of growth is impressive if it can be sustained.

In the report manufacturers predict a 30-fold increase in the US market in as little as five years, even under current economic conditions. Primary drivers include the eight-year 30% federal investment tax credit enacted in October 2008, recent and potential private equity investment, and greater equipment manufacturing capabilities.

Conclusion

Distributed electric energy generation can help alleviate many of the critical problems facing our current over-taxed grid and avoid the need in many cases to lay down thousands of miles of new high voltage transmission lines. Distributed power as an idea seems sensible, especially in a post fossil world where power is gathered from low density and widely scattered variable sources, such as the wind or the sun. While there are some factors encouraging economies of scale – for example large turbines are more efficient than smaller ones – alternative energy seems well suited to a distributed energy topology typified by a large number of smaller scale facilities that are, in many cases, closely sited to consumers. In this manner power is delivered almost straight to the consumer and the grid becomes increasingly a kind of peer to peer power network re-distributing surplus power to regions of energy deficit – the grid as a more of a load balancer than a one way power pipeline from a few massive thermoelectric plants to the multitude of consumers.

It appears that Google is getting ever deeper into the sun business. Stating that it is dissatisfied with the general lack of progress on achieving breakthroughs in green technology, the company wants to build better highly reflective and rugged mirrors — as well as the mirror substrate that the reflective surface is mounted on. By reflecting more light and more of the solar spectrum than ordinary mirrors these mirrors have the potential to reduce the cost of solar thermal systems by up to 25 per cent.

Google founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin are already involved in the solar energy sector as a key investor in several solar technology firms, notably in NanoSolar and Google itself has recently participated in a $115 million round of funding for BrightSource Energy, an Oakland, Calif., solar thermal startup. Google is also invested in eSolar, a utility scale solar thermal startup headquartered in Pasadena, Ca.

Solar Mirrors Are Critically Important

So this latest move should not really surprise; it is a logical progression into the space. The folks at Google realize that one of the critical elements of all solar thermal systems is very high quality mirrors that have the requisite high reflectivity needed to build efficient and lower cost solar thermal systems, whether they are trough based systems, dish type systems, or solar towers using fields of heliostats to focus light energy.

“We’ve been looking at very unusual materials for the mirrors both for the reflective surface as well as the substrate that the mirror is mounted on,” Google’s green energy czar Bill Weihl said at the Global Climate and Alternative Energy Summit in San Francisco.

The cost of the mirrors or heliostats, which focus the sun’s energy on a small area heating some carrier fluid, such as oil or molten salt to very high temperatures, is a major component of the overall capital costs of a solar thermal plant.

Weihl said Google is looking to cut the cost of making heliostats, the fields of mirrors that have to track the sun, by at least a factor of two, “ideally a factor of three or four.”

“Typically what we’re seeing is $2.50 to $4 a watt (for) capital cost,” Weihl said. “So a 250 megawatt installation would be $600 million to a $1 billion. It’s a lot of money.”

In his remarks Weihl also stated his view that it is critical – especially at this early stage – that the federal government fund basic research to encourage breakthrough ideas that can help transform our economy away from fossil fuel dependency.

He said, “I’d like to see $20 billion or $30 billion for 10 yrs (for the sector). That would be fabulous. It’s pretty clear what we have seen isn’t enough.”

Google is also Looking at Solar Powered Gas Turbines

The company is also researching the idea of using gas turbines driven by solar energy instead of natural gas as a means of further bringing down the final per kilowatt hour cost of solar thermal electricity down to grid parity.

“In two to three years we could be demonstrating a significant scale pilot system that would generate a lot of power and would be clearly mass manufacturable at a cost that would give us a levelized cost of electricity that would be in the 5 cents or sub 5 cents a kilowatt hour range,” Weihl said.

Google has shown itself to be quite proactive and progressive on energy efficiency policies. For example its vast datacenters are some of the most energy efficient datacenters out there and they have been exploring ways to keep improving energy efficiency. Google also aggressively recycles its IT hardware. And has covered the roofs of its corporate campus with over 9,000 separate solar panels, amounting to a total of 1.6 megawatts of power, which is 30% of its peak power usage. Note the picture that is paired with this article is of the Google corporate campus and shows the solar panels arrayed on its roofs. If only all other companies of its heft were half as green as Google is showing itself to be the world would be in much better shape than it is today.

The sun can help coal fired power plants burn less coal by pre-heating the water used to make high pressure high temperature steam during periods when the sun is shining. In other words the sun would do part of the work of producing high pressure/ high temperature steam and in this manner the overall hybrid solar/coal power plant would use less coal than a coal only power plant would need to produce the same amount of electric power.

A significant cost of any solar thermal plant is the complex of boilers, steam generators, condensers and cooling towers in which water is boiled to produce high pressure steam that drives turbines transforming mechanical energy into electric energy and that recovers as much of the low pressure low temperature steam as possible in order to re-cycle it through the power cycle again. Roughly forty percent of the upfront capital cost of a standalone solar thermal electric power facility is in building the steam powered thermal electric portion of the facility that is critical in transforming the concentrated thermal energy that has been produced by the solar arrays into electricity. Maintaining and operating this portion of the power producing facility is also a significant part of the on-going operating costs.

In comparison the large arrays of solar troughs (or mirrors focused on a solar tower) that collect and concentrate the sun’s heat amount to around 50-60 percent of the total cost of a standalone solar thermal plant.

Leverage the Existing Electric Energy Producing Infrastructure of Current Coal Fired Thermoelectric Power Plants to Lower the Cost of Solar Thermal Power

By pairing solar thermal collecting arrays with existing or proposed coal fired thermoelectric power plants this very large cost – that would be necessary in a standalone solar thermal plant — can be avoided, in this manner significantly reducing the per kilowatt hour cost of the solar portion of the hybrid solar/coal plant. Various estimates have calculated that solar thermal energy could be between 30 to 50 percent cheaper by hitching a ride on existing thermoelectric power plants. This would bring the cost of solar thermal electric energy below 12 cents per kilowatt- hour or even lower making it competitive with existing grid power.

Another advantage is that because coal fired thermoelectric power plants operate at a higher temperature the overall efficiency of energy conversion from thermal energy into mechanical and hence electric energy operates at this higher level of efficiency. Existing solar thermal designs operate at around 400°C versus 500°C or higher typical in large thermoelectric plants. By pairing solar power with the existing power plant the solar contribution to the overall energy output also operates at this higher energy conversion efficiency of around 45% versus the 38% typical in existing solar thermal electric plants.

As Hank Price, director of technology at Abengoa Solar said, “It’s potentially the most cost-effective way to get significant solar power on the grid”.

The energy contributed by the sun reduces the amount of coal that the power plant needs to burn and in fact achieves a comparable reduction in green house gas emissions as would be achieved by a standalone solar power facility of similar size, but at a much lower initial cost.

Abengoa Solar and Xcel Energy Announce Solar/Coal Hybrid Power Project

Abengoa Solar, a large Spanish utility scale solar power producer and Xcel Energy, Colorado’s largest electrical utility, have begun modifying the Cameo coal plant near Grand Junction in Colorado so that portion of the energy needed to heat water is provided by the sun. This is a demonstration project and the solar contribution will be small (somewhere around 3%), but could easily be scaled up by adding more mirrors. As much as ten or fifteen percent of the total energy needs of existing coal fired power plants that are suitably sited in sunny regions and with enough surrounding land to build the arrays could come from the sun.

Not a Panacea, but it is a Low Hanging Fruit that Can Help Build out the Solar Thermal Industrial Base and Help Reduce Global Greenhouse Gas Emissions in the Meantime

Anything to do with the continued mass burning of coal is anathema to many environmentalists and many find it hard to pair the notion of renewable energy with these green house gas spewing fossil fuel dinosaurs. But once one gets past the initial instinctive distaste it is an idea that makes good sense for those coal fired plants that are sited in sunny regions and that have enough surrounding area to support the solar collecting fields. This will not change the world by any stretch of the imagination, but it can help at the margins making some of our country’s (and the world’s) coal fired power plants somewhat less polluting and fossil fuel consuming than they currently are. Additionally these solar-coal hybrids could help sunny regions meet their greenhouse gas reduction targets.

Additionally, because of the major cost savings – in the solar portion of the total power system — of these solar-coal hybrids, it will make it easier to justify adding solar power to the grid. If major utilities begin to retrofit existing coal fired power plants in suitable areas with solar power assists then the entire solar thermal industry manufacturing base will be propelled from a marginal small scale position into becoming a much larger producer.

As this happens, economies of scale and attendant improvements in the manufacturing process and solar thermal technology (such as in the glass for the mirrors and so forth) will help to create a strong solar thermal industrial base that will then be able to stand on its own and lower its own costs to grid parity for stand alone systems.

In addition in areas where there are abundant low grade geothermal resources, in many places in the American West for example, a geothermal-coal hybridized power plant could use less coal. As with the solar-coal hybrid the geothermal resources would be used to preheat the water for the boilers saving coal.

Aora Solar Energy Company, formerly known as EDIG Solar, an Israeli solar power startup has launched a small 100kw hybrid solar/gas turbine system that will provide power to kibbutz Samar located in the southern desert of Israel.   Besides concentrated solar energy, this hybrid power station can also run on other alternative fuels, including bio-gas, bio-diesel and natural gas. 

By adding the flexibility to run the micro-turbine using an alternative energy source besides the sun this hybrid flexibility the power plant can continue to produce electricity when sunlight is insufficient, such as at night or when it is cloudy.  This addresses one of the critical shortcomings inherent in solar power systems.  This small scale hybrid solar/gas power plant can be run 24 hours a day and on all days whether there is sufficient sunlight or not. Because of this it may be an ideal electric energy solution for the many widely scattered small communities around the world that are currently lacking reliable electric energy and are largely disconnected from the electric grids in their regions.

The system is also designed to co-generate usable heating energy for hot water and space heating.

AORA’s “Power Flower” station is built around a solar receiving tower and was so named because its solar tower has a shape that looks like a gigantic tulip – a reminiscence that has been accentuated by painting it a bright yellow.  A field of 30 tracking mirrors or heliostats is arrayed around the solar side of this tower on around a half an acre of land. Like in other solar tower systems, such as the much larger ones that have been built in Spain, this array of heliostats follows the sun through its daily arc across the sky and focuses sunlight onto a receiving surface located at the top of the tower.  In this small scale solar tower the concentrated solar thermal energy is used to heat air to a temperature of 1,000 degrees Celsius. The hot air is directed through a turbine, which converts the thermal energy into electric power. The turbine in this hybrid system can also be powered by burning gas.

Aora plans to produce portable and easily assembled “LEGO-type” units that can be used to provide power for small communities and remote commercial operations. The power plant will consist of a series of base modules including the sun-tracking heliostats that concentrate the solar radiation, a Power Conversion Unit (PCU) situated at the top of the solar tower, and a micro-gas turbine that generates electricity and usable thermal energy.

Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd announced plans to buid a 1GW solar power plant in Australia, which would make it the largest solar-electricity plant in the world surpassing the current record holder in California. Details about the project will be released soon and successful bidders will be named in the first half of 2010. The project is expected to cost A$1.4 billion (US$1.05 billion) and will represent a major investment in solar power, which the Prime Minister hopes will help propel the country into a leadership role in solar energy. This is a big step, but only one of many towards Australia’s stated goal of obtaining 20 percent of its electricity from renewable sources by 2020.

“The government plans to invest with industry in the biggest solar generation plant in the world, three times the size of the world’s current biggest, which is in California,” Rudd said.

“Why are we doing this? We are doing it in order to support a clean energy future for Australia, we’re doing it to boost economic activity now and we’re doing it also to provide jobs and much needed opportunities for business as well.”

The hope is that this first project will eventually lead to a growing network of solar-powered stations across the country.

Rudd also said Australia would become a full member of the International Renewable Energy Agency, which will have its first global meeting in June.

The reports I have seen do not clarify how the target cost of around US$1 per installed watt will be achieved or if this is planned to be a solar-thermal-electric or a solar-photovoltaic plant. As details become more clear I will update this post.

San Francisco’s Board of Supervisors has given its approval to build one of the largest urban solar photovoltaic arrays in the country. The solar energy installation, which will be located at 24th and Ortega Streets in the Sunset district on the roof of the city’s largest reservoir will have a 5 megawatt capacity when completed in early 2010. It will consist of nearly 25,000 solar panels covering an area the size of nearly twelve football fields and becoming California’s largest photovoltaic system and the nation’s largest municipal solar project. This project will more than triple the municipal solar generation in San Francisco and reduce carbon emissions by over 100,000 metric tons, furthering the City’s leadership in clean energy implementation. It will also generate 71 green collar jobs in the city.

“Earlier this week, San Francisco took another major step towards achieving our commitments to reduce greenhouse gases and grow our green economy. bWith this single project, we will more than triple San Francisco’s solar energy production, build California’s largest photovoltaic system and help lead the state towards a future of clean, renewable energy.”, said San Francisco’s mayor, Gavin Newsom, in an e-mail message.

Under the terms of the public/private partnership, San Francisco based Recurrent Energy, will assume all the risk and responsibility of financing, constructing and operating the project. In return the San Francisco Public Utilities Commission commits to buying all of the solar power from the system at a competitive rate for the next 25 years, at a cost of 23.5 cents per kilowatt-hour. In years 7, 15 or 25 of operation, the city will also have the option to purchase the array outright at fair market value or $33 million — whichever is higher.

By structuring the deal in this manner the city will pay for predictable green power and not the large up front capital cost of the the solar PV infrastructure itself. The contract allows the city, which being a government entity doesn’t pay taxes, to effectively benefit from a 30 percent federal investment tax credit that is available to private companies. It is estimated that the city of San Francisco will save $25 million by choosing this public/private route over building out the solar PV arrays itself.

Four of the City’s 11 supervisors voted against the project citing concerns about how the deal was structured and that the city would be locked into paying too much for the power should the cost of PV modules come down significantly in the next few years. Some have also raised concerns about the location in the Sunset district, which in spite of its name is often blanketed by fog in the summer months.

Concerns Raised About The Impact of Solar Projects on Fragile Ecosystems of The Mohave Desert

The Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER), a national alliance of local state and federal resource professionals with the mission to work for environmental enforcement, has published an inter-agency memo by the National Park Service that raises an alarm about the slew of solar projects scheduled to be built in the Mahove Desert region.

The February 9, 2009 memo from NPS Pacific Regional Director Jon Jarvis to the Acting Nevada U.S. Bureau of Land Management (BLM) Director Amy Leuders details concerns about 63 utility-scale solar projects slated for BLM lands in southern Nevada. Jarvis cites potential negative impacts for Lake Mead National Recreation Area, Mojave National Preserve, and the Devils Hole section of Death Valley National Park.

“The NPS asserts that it is not in the public interest for BLM to approve plans of development for water-cooled solar energy projects in the arid basins of southern Nevada, some of which are already over-appropriated, where there may be no reasonable expectation of acquiring new water rights in some basins, and where transference of existing points of diversion may be heavily constrained for some basins.”

“Except for the sun, there is little that will be ‘green’ about mega-solar plants in the desert,” stated PEER Executive Director Jeff Ruch, noting that a key dilemma is that the places of greatest solar potential are also the most arid. “There is not enough water in the desert to run utility-scale water-cooled solar plants.”

Concerns about the negative impacts of big solar facilities and the transmission corridors they require to deliver power to market has led U.S. Senator Diane Feinstein (D-CA) to propose the creation of a new national monument covering more than a half-million Mojave Desert acres to exclude BLM solar leases.

Interior Secretary Ken Salazar has promised to assemble a comprehensive energy plan that will presumably minimize these inter-agency conflicts. In February, Secretary Salazar suspended BLM oil and gas lease sales in Utah following protests from NPS about negative effects on nearby national parks.

“A comprehensive energy plan is needed but cannot depend solely on public lands,” added Ruch. “America’s deserts should not become national sacrifice zones for energy farms.”

The BLM has been flooded with an estimated 63 large-scale solar projects are proposed for BLM lands in the region. In addition transmission routes would have to cross BLM lands to carry power from these remote desert areas to markets in California and elsewhere.

BLM officials did not publicly respond to the issues raised in the memo, although Linda Resseguie, a BLM project manager in Washington, said there is “great sensitivity” within the agency to concerns over solar power plant siting.

There is a growing divide between some parts of the environmental community who oppose large scale solar and wind projects on undeveloped land and who instead propose that solar and wind power should be developed in the urban areas that need the power or on land that has already been degraded, such as brownfields or old mine sites etc. They encourage a vision of solar rooftops and are opposing turning large tracts of desert land into huge solar or wind power production facilities.

The solar power sector needs to find alternatives to water cooling if it wants to expand to large scale facilities in water poor areas. The Ivanpah Solar Electric Generating System project, proposed by BrightSource Energy Inc. based in Oakland, CA, would cover 4,065 acres and produce enough electricity to power nearly 200,000 homes. The plant would employ an air cooled system that requires less water.

Exelon and SunPower Announce Plans to Build Nation’s Largest Urban Solar Energy Plant in Chicago

Exelon Corp. and SunPower announced an agreement to develop the nation’s largest urban solar power plant at a former industrial site on Chicago’s South Side. The 10-megawatt solar photovoltaic (PV) facility is scheduled for completion by the end of this year. The $60 million project is contingent upon Exelon receiving a federal loan guarantee under the recently passed federal stimulus legislation formally known as the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009, which includes provisions for investment in green jobs and emissions reduction. Exelon is seeking a loan guarantee for up to 80 percent of the project cost from the U.S. Department of Energy Loan Guarantee Program Office (LGPO).

Exelon plans to lease 39 acres of the West Pullman Industrial Redevelopment Area from the City of Chicago for the project. The former industrial site is a “brownfield” property that will be redeveloped for productive reuse. Exelon Generation will own and operate the plant, and market the electricity and Solar Renewable Energy Certificates (SRECs) it generates. SunPower, a manufacturer of high-efficiency solar cells, solar panels and solar systems, will design, manufacture and install the solar system.   Exelon officials said the plant would have 32,800 solar panels that would convert the sun’s rays into electricity that could serve 1,200 to 1,500 homes for a year.

Wal-Mart expanding its use of Solar Power in California

In honor of Earth Day, Wal-Mart announced that it is expanding its solar power program in California. It plans to put solar panels on between 10 to 20 additional facilities in the state over the next year and a half. The giant retailer is building on its base of 18 solar arrays that have already been installed on Wal-Mart facilities in the state. The new solar installations are expected to provide 20 to 30 percent of each location’s electric needs, Wal-Mart said. The solar panels for these new facilities will be supplied by BP Solar.

India Plans to Get on The Solar Energy Map

In a recent report on India’s solar energy state, SEMI India said that India has a great opportunity to get on the global solar photovoltaic map. Solar energy could help fill India’s chronic energy shortage providing the country with another clean source of power. Solar energy has a huge potential to employ people of all skill levels in often undeserved rural areas that have high underemployment. Developing solar power could also help the country with its huge import bill on oil and coal, which is destined to grow as oil and other fossil fuels become increasingly scarce in the coming years. Solar energy is naturally suited for India, which is among the few countries in the world to have about 300 days of sunshine yearly.

SEMI India has formed a PV Advisory Committee headed by K. Subramanya, CEO of Tata, BP Solar Ltd, and comprising of executives from top solar PV manufacturers in the country to push the country’s activities on this front. The report comes against the backdrop of India’s National Action Plan on Climate Change which had a central role for solar power, being announced by the federal government about a year ago.

The committee recommended that there be close industry-government ties to achieve manufacturing scale, drive common industry standards, goal-oriented research and development efforts, specific financing and subsidies, training and development of manpower and build consumer awareness.

A robust solar PV industry in India would create up to 100,000 new jobs in 10 years and transform the lives of 450 million people in India who even now have no access to electricity. About 50 percent of households in the country are cut off from electricity supply and the oil and coal import bill that makes up as much as 7 percent of India’s Gross Domestic Product. These are dramatic enough figures pointing to the potential of solar PV-based power generation and when you add that the country has 300 days of sunshine to harness such power from, the opportunity for solar is abundant and the need, immediate, said Sathya Prasad, president, SEMI India.

First Solar gets Financing for a 53 MW Solar Facility in Germany

First Solar Inc. and Juwi Holding AG, have secured financing for a 53-megawatt solar facility in Cottbus, Germany that they are partnering to develop. The companies declined to give a dollar amount, but said that they have 80% of the financing for the project. The cost of this project — using the current cost projections for solar — could range between the high two hundred milion dollars to more than $300 million.

When completed the project, being built on a brownfield Soviet era military base will be the largest solar power facility in Germany. It will produce enough clean solar power for 14,000 homes.

“First Solar’s mission is to enable a world powered by clean, affordable solar electricity,” said Stephan Hansen, managing director, First Solar GmbH. “This project alone is expected to displace approximately 35,000 tons of C02 emissions a year. But we are particularly proud of this project because it adds an additional element to ‘clean.’ Not only will the project produce clean electricity, but it will also result in the removal of hazardous munitions from this project site,” he added.

First Solar produces thin film photovoltaic modules and is active in the German market.

After a run of some  years of heady double digit growth the Solar PV sector, the US has hit a period of slower growth in which some of the weaker players are being shaken out of the market.  This year will be characterized by consolidation as more successful firms and better capitalized firms build their market share and absorb weaker players.  This shakeout was inevitable and is natural, but it was undoubtedly triggered by the financial crash of late 2008 coupled with the bursting of the oil futures speculative bubble, and the temporary collapse in prices on the oil spot markets.

In spite of the current year’s stressful financial difficulties and revenue stagnation, according to a recent report by the market research firm Gartner, 2009 is expected to see a 24% growth rate on a gigawatt (GW) basis expanding to 6.4GW in 2009 and reaching 23.4GW by 2013,

The longer term outlook for the global PV market is considerably rosier as the current financial crisis abates and the temporary collapse in crude oil prices reverts to a long term trend of rising costs driven by an ever growing scarcity of supply. Gartner has predicted that the PV market is poised to continue a very rapid expansion with a 17 percent compound growth rate in revenue and is projected to reach $34 billion in global revenue by 2013.

This report also forecasts that crystalline silicon will remain the dominant PV technology during the next five years, despite rapid growth in thin-film PV sales, such as the CIGS thin film cells made by companies like First Solar.  The is also because the temporary global shortage in supplies of hyper pure polysilicon that were hurting the growth of crystalline PV production is diminishing as large new production facilities are brought online.   For example the giant German firm Wacker Chemie AG will build a $1 billion polysiliconfab plant in southeastern Tennessee.

The future does look very bright for the solar PV sector but in the near term some firms will not survive. But for those that do business will be very good indeed.

Earlier this month, First Solar, Inc. announced that it has reduced its manufacturing cost for solar modules in the fourth quarter 2008 to 98 cents per watt, becoming the first solar cell manufacturing company to break the $1 per watt price barrier. This is a major price milestone for the solar photovoltaic manufacturing sector and represents a significant step towards achieving what is known in the industry as as grid parity, the price level where the per watt cost for solar electricity reaches the current averaged cost of electricity on the grid a goal First Solar plans to reach by 2012.

First Solar chief executive officer Mike Ahearn said, “This achievement marks a milestone in the solar industry’s evolution toward providing truly sustainable energy solutions. First Solar is proud to be leading the way toward clean, affordable solar electricity as a viable alternative to fossil fuels.”

First Solar, Inc. manufactures solar modules with an advanced semiconductor technology and provides comprehensive PV solutions that significantly reduce solar electricity costs. By enabling clean, renewable electricity at competitive prices, First Solar provides an economic and environmentally responsible alternative to existing peaking fossil-fuel electric generation. First Solar PV power plants operate with no water, air emissions or waste stream. First Solar set the benchmark for environmentally responsible product life cycle management by introducing the industry’s first comprehensive collection and recycling program for solar modules. From raw material sourcing through end-of-life collection and recycling, First Solar is focused on creating cost-effective renewable energy solutions that protect and enhance the environment.

Interior Secretary Ken Salazar wants to create renewable energy zones to spur solar and wind energy projects, and build power lines to get the electricity to markets.

In an interview with The Associated Press, Salazar said that while some regions of the country as well as offshore areas have great potential for wind energy and solar, there isn’t a clear plan to develop the resources.

He also said he will use some of the economic stimulus money to put young people to work on federal land in what he called a “21st century civilian conservation corps.”  Read the whole story.

Wacker Chemie AG will build a $1 billion plant in southeastern Tennessee that is estimated to create 500 green collar jobs in the region to manufacture hyperpure polycrystalline silicon, primary material used in the manufacture of  solar panels.  The company has purchased a 550-acre site about 30 miles northeast of Chattanooga.

“We expect polysilicon demand from the solar and semiconductor industries to further increase in the coming years,” said Dr. Rudolph Staudigl, President and CEO of Wacker Chemie.   said He further explained how purchasing the site in Chattanooga will enable it to quickly build up its production capacity outside of the Euro zone in order to meet the projected growth in demand forHemlock Semiconductor detailing its plans to build a new US$1.2 billion polysilicon plant based in Clarksville, Tennessee.

Hemlock Semiconductor Corporation (HSC)  is the worlds largest producer of polysilicon and Wacker Chemie AG is the world’s second largest producer of polysilicon.  Taken together these two announcements suggest that Tennessee is rapidly positioning itself as an emerging player in the solar manufacturing industrial sector, leveraging its supply of inexpensive electricity, geographic location, and transportation infrastructure. In fact the Tennessee site was picked in part because of its size, proximity to a OLIN Corp (a chlorine manufacturer), power from the Tennessee Valley Authority and the transportation infrastructure.  Wholesale electricity costs in the TVA service area are approximately 50% less than in Germany, where Wacker currently operates polysilicon plants.

There is vast potential for solar energy development across the southeastern and southwestern United States. In fact, the United States has some of the best solar resources in the world. With the right policies and leadership from the government this sector is poised to take off and experience a long period of very rapid growth, becoming an important contributor to our nation’s electric energy mix and providing many tens of thousands of green collar jobs across the country.

Growth in the US manufacture of solar PV cells has been hampered by a shortage of polysilicon. Demand for polysilicon is rising incredibly fast, manufacturers are scrambling to keep up. The photovoltaic solar industry sectors growth was hampered during the 2006-2008  period due to severe shortages and allocations of the polysilicon material. This skyrocketing of demand has led to a significant rise in openings of new polysilicon manufacturing companies, especially in the U.S. where increasing federal and state incentives are pushing up demand.

Wacker Chemie AG is a globally operating chemical company with expertise in fields such as silicone and polymer chemistry, specialty and fine chemistry, polysilicon production and semiconductor technologies. It reported last month that its sales reached $5.5 billion in 2008.