Global Solar Introduces Flexible BIPV based on CIGS

In the latest sign of the coming of age of flexible CIGS photovoltaic devices, Global Solar Energy has unveiled a lightweight module targeted at the commercial and industrial flat-rooftop market. The copper-indium-gallium (di)selenide module, called the PowerFLEX BIPV, has a large 5.75m × 0.50m format and a 300W power rating.

Company officials told PV-Tech that the new thin-film PV product has been submitted for UL, IEC, and JEC certification, which they expect to be completed by the end of the year, with the commercial launch set for the first quarter of 2010.

Jean-Noel Poirier, Global Solar’s VP of marketing and business development, said that “the core channel partners are the roofing companies, the roofing membrane manufacturing companies.” Global Solar has been sending samples to these customers in anticipation of the market rollout.

“They want a piece of the PV action…they want a PV product specially designed for roofs,” he added.

CFO/COO Steve Alexander credits “the nine or ten key early adopters” that helped “ensure that we’re making a product that is exponentially better than anything else out there today, and they’ve been really key in the final development of this product. They’re perfectly happy to do their objective qualification alongside our certification, so we come together at the same time, and we’re ready to sell to them and they’re ready to [buy], for the 2011 purchase cycle.”

The Tucson, AZ-based company cites several advantages of its flexible modules over traditional roof-mounted rigid glass module-based systems, including the light weight, nonpenetrating and nonperforating installation, minimal wind load, conformal integration, and aesthetic appeal.

It also sees 30-40% savings in balance of systems (BOS) and installation costs, since the modules lie flat on the roof with no mounting structure and can occupy more rooftop real estate, thus increasing the watts per project.

Global Solar’s PowerFLEX BIPV will have a 25-year power output warranty (with the standard 90% performance guarantee at 10 years and 80% at 25 years) and a five-year product and workmanship warranty, according to Poirier.

He said that the company has run the modules through 3000 hours of damp heat testing on its own test equipment—three times the amount of time required for IEC certification.

The new product will go head to head with ECD Unisolar’s flexible amorphous-silicon thin-film PV module laminate line, as well as with emerging solar roofing solutions from fellow CIGS manufacturers, Ascent Solar and SoloPower. Citing a 12.6% aperture conversion efficiency, Global Solar claims the highest efficiency and power density per rooftop on the market.

“The value proposition is very much driven by the combination of efficiency and form factor,” Poirier told PV-Tech. “We can put a lot of watts in a large format and can generate economies of scale at BOS and installation.”

Alexander explained that the company “didn’t have to retool the factory to do this product. We took the existing string-module line and added a lamination/finishing operation.” He expects that once sales ramp up next year, about two-thirds of production will be dedicated to the BIPV line.

Because of the extreme moisture sensivity of the quartenary PV material, the barrier encapsulation layer has been identified as the key challenge for flexible CIGS modules to overcome in order for them to be market ready. Alexander believes Global Solar has an advantage over the other polycrystalline thin-film companies in that regard.

“Because we got into production before everyone else, we had the benefit of working with every one of the materials suppliers, and we continue to work with almost all of them, even the ones that our competitors are working with. We don’t know what, for example, SoloPower is doing exactly, but we know what their vapor-barrier [materials] suppliers are offering.”

“There are a lot of technically viable solutions out there, but the challenge is having a commercially viable solution. Because we’re ready and we’re fortunate enough to have tested the whole market for those films, we’ve been able to settle on some good solutions that have been very effective for us and that we can actually buy,” he added.

Although the new module has BIPV—building integrated photovoltaics—in its name, Poirier emphasized that the real addressable market is “rooftops with weight-bearing limits… commercial roofs with weight limitations where you can’t put glass PV modules on them without reinforcing the building.”

With that in mind, he believes that about 30-40% of commercial and industrial rooftops worldwide fall into that category and that the PV market for the subsector that Global Solar is targeting will reach somewhere between 1GW and 3GW by 2015.

California Will Drive Mid-sized Solar Projects with New Incentive Program

he California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC) has issued a proposed decision to launch a new renewable incentive program with the aim of driving the uptake of mid-sized renewable energy development. This next-generation feed-in tariff program will require investor-owned California utilities to purchase electricity from renewable energy systems between one and 20MW in size.

"California has robust policies for developing large, utility-scale solar power plants and for putting smaller systems on homes and businesses, but there is a clear gap in the middle. The CPUC proposal is designed to unlock that missing piece, providing an additional opportunity for solar market and job growth and for quickly bringing massive new amounts of clean energy to the state," said Adam Browning, executive director of Vote Solar, who will work with CPUC to implement these changes.

"Solar policy should provide the foundations for long-term market growth by providing a transparent process, a level playing field, and a reliable market opportunity," said Kevin Fox, of the law firm Keyes & Fox, which represents IREC, another advocate of the initiative. "This program achieves those larger policy goals through an innovative pricing mechanism that also protects California ratepayers and overcomes the legal challenges that have hindered widespread feed-in tariff development in the U.S."

The CPUC proposal establishes a 1GW pilot program for power from eligible mid-sized renewable energy systems. The program requires California's three largest investor-owned utilities to hold biannual competitive auctions into which renewable developers can bid. Utilities must award contracts starting with the lowest cost viable project and moving up in price until the MW requirement is reached for that round.

The program will use standard terms and conditions to lower transactional costs and provide the contractual transparency needed for effective financing. Development security and relatively short project development timelines ensure project viability. The commission can act to finalize and adopt the program in as soon as thirty days.

California Approves First CSP Plant Since 1990

The full California Energy Commission (CEC) unanimously approved NextEra Energy Resources' 250MW Beacon Solar Energy Project, the first concentrating solar power plant (CSP) to be approved in the state in a generation.

The CEC, which will take final decisions on several other large solar thermal plants in the coming weeks, has been racing to review the projects.

The permitting process has been lengthy - Beacon has been under review since March 2008 - and often contentious, encompassing issues of desert land use, protection of threatened and endangered species, and water use.

"Today’s action begins the journey of increasing clean renewable energy in California,” CEC Chairman Karen Douglas says in a statement.

According to the CEC, it hasn't approved a CSP plant since February 1990, when it gave the go ahead to Luz Solar Electric Generating Systems (SEGS) IX and Luz SEGS X.

A subsidiary of NextEra Energy Resources, the project development unit of energy company FPL Group, proposed the large-scale parabolic trough project on fallow agricultural land at the edge of the Mojave Desert in Kern County.

Unlike several other large CSP projects rushing to obtain permits this summer, Beacon would not be built on federal land and therefore does not require a seperate right of way from the Bureau of Land Management.

One major box is yet to be checked by NextEra - a purchaser for the gigawatts of energy Beacon would crank out each year.

Californian utilities are hungry for green energy to fulfill their increasing renewables requirements under state law.

The state is debating whether to elevate its current requirement that utilities get 20% of their electricity from renewable sources by the end of this year, to 33% by 2020.

Source:   ReCharge

Solar Cell Manufacturing Trends

The following are trends and developments now playing out in a big way as the solar industry moves out of its juvenile stage. These will give us important clues as to the success factors for the future:

1.  The silicon solar cell manufacturing industry is rapidly moving to lower cost countries such as China. This is actually a bit of a surprise to me as the industry is still dependent on government subsidies and I would have thought that the politicians would insist on more local production. To be clear, there will be plenty of local production as well, but the biggest production volumes will take place in lower cost countries.

2. The cost of materials and equipment is dropping fast.

3. The prices of solar cells and panels are coming down quickly.

4. The volume of solar cells as panels is increasing dramatically.

5. Competition among manufacturers will continue to intensify.

6. Demand is volatile. (This is particularly true for the solar industry, until the price becomes competitive with coal, as government subsidies are subject to change along with general economical dynamics.)

7. Production equipment is becoming steadily better and cheaper.

8. Material science is improving significantly.

9. Production and process expertise is improving very quickly.

I believe that the improvements in production and process expertise will contribute to helping the industry meet parity with coal quicker than otherwise expected. Process improvement leads to higher cell efficiency, which in turn helps drive down the cost per kWh.

“I believe that the improvements in production and process expertise will contribute to helping the industry meet parity with coal quicker than otherwise expected.”

Currently many production lines are purchased as complete lines, if not complete factories. A team of experts will commission the lines, enable them to achieve a certain level of performance and then basically say, “Don’t touch!” Even for the cell manufacturers that do purchase individual equipment and commission the lines themselves, there is currently a relatively limited understanding of the process capabilities. This is about to change, and the material suppliers and equipment vendors will contribute strongly to such process improvement.

Let’s use the metallization (firing) process for silicon solar cells as an example. The wafer’s thermal profile (time vs. temperature) has a significant impact on cell efficiency. The “sweet spot” of this thermal process depends on numerous variables such as the properties of the wafer, processes upstream of the firing furnace, properties of the firing material, the furnace and more. Furthermore, the thermal process is dynamic, meaning that over days and weeks, it drifts as the furnace lamps age, preventive maintenance introduces changes, wear and tear in the furnace, the wafer characteristics vary, etc.

Developing and maintaining an optimized thermal process will lead to higher cell efficiency. In a research project conducted by Heraeus, the cell efficiency increased by an incredible 0.51% simply by identifying the optimal wafer profile. Other case studies with actual manufacturers report 0.15% efficiency increases through thermal process optimization.

Because there are tens of millions of possible furnace setups (zone temperatures and conveyor speed), the process development will identify the appropriate process window (range of optimal profiles) and corresponding furnace setpoints. Once the process window is defined, it is a simple matter of transferring the identical process to all the production lines regardless of equipment age or brand name. Each furnace may have a different setup, but they all yield the same optimal profile on the wafers. Additionally, it is quick to adjust the process back into its “sweet spot” when it drifts. It needs to be quick as throughput is paramount to the profitability of the production lines. Actually, the process optimization does include optimizing the furnace throughput. This will, however, only lead to a real throughput gain when the furnace is the bottleneck in the production line.

”Since the production cost has not changed, virtually all of this revenue growth flows to the bottom line.”

The semiconductor manufacturing industry saw a tremendous increase in yield when the industry started maturing. To a large degree, it achieved this through better process control and improved production equipment and material. As the silicon solar cell manufacturing industry matures beyond its juvenile stage, it finds itself on the threshold of a similar development. It will move at warp speed because of the tremendous profit potential that will be unleashed. A leading furnace manufacturer recently calculated that increasing the cell efficiency by 0.10% for a modern 25 MW line would increase the revenue by more than $1/4 million per line per year. Since the production cost has not changed, virtually all of this revenue growth flows to the bottom line. This baby is growing up fast!

Source:  Solar Novus Today by Bjorn Dahle  To read more about the author click here

France to Cut Solar FIT by 12%

France has decided to cut the feed-in-tariff paid for solar-power generated electricity by 12%, according the French newspaper Le Figaro, as passed on by Bloomberg. The wire service later noted that the 12% cut applies to panels other than those installed on individual houses, and will be effective September 1.

Source:   SolarPlaza

New CIGS Solar Cell Efficiency Record

Researchers from the Germany Center for Solar Energy and Hydrogen Research (ZSW) have broken a new efficiency record for thin-film copper indium gallium diselenide solar cells.

The researchers produced a 20.3 percent efficient cell, only a fraction less than the best multi-crystalline cells on the market. However, producing a cell in a lab is much different than mass production. CIGS cells typically reach about 10-11 percent when manufactured in large numbers.

The area of the world record cell is 0.5 square centimeters. The semiconducting CIGS layer and the contact layers have a total thickness of only four thousandths of a millimeter, making them 50 times thinner than standard silicon cells.

CIGS cells have received a lot of attention in recent years because of their high efficiency. But scaling the technology outside of the lab has been difficult because of the complexity of manufacturing. Many companies have been bogged down in building new manufacturing lines and have burned through copious amounts of capital with little to show.

Within the next years, the efficiency of the relatively low-priced CIGS thin-film solar modules will rise from about 11 percent to about 15 percent, say ZSW researchers. The question is: Will companies be able to finally capitalize on that efficiency gain? Or will they continue to be bogged down by high capital requirements and low product volumes?

Some companies, like the start-up Applied Quantum Technologies, have learned from the problems that have hurt CIGS producers and are taking a more modular, incremental approach to building manufacturing lines.

One of the older companies in the CIGS space, MiaSole, announced this week that it will be supplying the developer juwi Solar with 7.5 MW of modules for projects in Germany. Miasole said earlier this year that it would ship over 20-MW of product. However, it is still unclear if it will sell that much in the remainder of 2010.

Source:   Renewable Energy World

China Restricts Export of Rare-Earth Resources

Over the past 5 years, China has emerged as a world-leading producer of solar and wind technologies. Due to its insatiable appetite for energy, the country is quickly becoming a top installer of renewables as well.

China is still consuming coal and oil at astonishing rates, however. On average, the country installs a new coal-fired facility every two weeks. Some experts believe that this will set China back and negate the progress it has made in the development of renewables.

Even so, China will continue to be a leader in the export of wind and solar technologies.

There's another factor that could increase China's role as a central figure in the renewables space: Its control of 95% of the rare earth resources like Indium, Gallium and Lithium. These are central to the functionality of solar cells (CIGS and CdTe) and battery technologies for automotive and power storage applications.

This is not a surprise. But the announcement from Chinese officials last month that it would decrease shipment of these resources by 72% certainly was. The goal is for China to lure technology companies over to the country by giving them access to restricted resources. If it works, we may see a lot more clean energy firms moving over to China.

It has given such signals in the past. China actually made a similar announcement in 2009, raising the ire of the international community.

Already, companies are setting up shop en masse in China due to lower labor costs and the need to be closer to the burgeoning renewables market around Asia. This decision to restrict exports of rare resources will likely accelerate the trend.

The Wall Street Journal had a great piece on the subject and the Energy Collective had a piece of commentary on the implications of the export restrictions on the renewable energy industry.

Source:   Renewable Energy World