Behind Record-Breaking Solar Cell Efficiencies
What's Behind Record-Breaking Solar Cell Efficiencies, Part 1
In this two-part series on solar cell efficiencies, we examine laboratory and commercial solar cell efficiencies of Crystalline Silicon, CIGs, Amorphous, Cadmium Telluride and Multijunction Concentrator cells.California, USA -- In solar, it's hard to go a month without hearing news about conversion efficiencies. In September, for example, Oerlikon Solar and its partner, Corning, said they broke the world efficiency record for a lab-created tandem-junction amorphous-silicon cell. The cell, which was tested by the U.S. National Renewable Energy Laboratory, delivered 11.9 percent stabilized efficiency.
Meanwhile, Conergy said its new selective-emitter technology could boost solar-cell efficiency from one of its German factories by "up to 0.5 percentage points." And scientists at Yonsei University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology announced new technologies that could one day enhance cell efficiencies by up to 65 percent, in the case of Yonsei, and that could double cell efficiencies, in the case of MIT.
"Everyone's working on efficiency," said Paul Wormser, senior director of product engineering and system solutions at Sharp Electronics' solar division. "You would be hard pressed to find a manufacturer that hasn't stated publicly at least once a year something about an efficiency improvement program."
Full articleLabels: CIGS, Polysilicon, solar efficiency, Solar Energy, solar panels
Thin Film 2010: Market Outlook to 2015
From only 17 megawatts in 2002 to nearly 1 gigawatt in 2008 (a compounded annualized growth rate of 96%), thin film’s rise over the last decade has been remarkable indeed. The search for alternative technologies to traditional crystalline silicon PV has led to a tidal wave of investment and entrepreneurial activity in thin film, with 170 active companies and over $2 billion in VC investment in the space. However, as of 2010, only two thin film companies have produced in excess of 100 MW annually.
Full ArticleLabels: CIGS, First Solar Inc, FSLR, Solar Energy, Solar Stocks, Solar Technology, Thin film solar cells
First Solar sizes up project sales, Solarion beams plastic CIGS, MiaSolé decloak
Solar Short Takes on pv--tech.org:
This edition of Solar Short Takes does a bit of number crunching of the recent project sell-off news from First Solar, checks progress by Solarion on the CIGS-on-plastic front, notes MiaSole’s recent re-emergence from the PR closet, finds Trina saying yes to MES, questions Applied Materials’ buy of Advent Solar, and offers the aloha lowdown on next year’s tropically inclined IEEE PVSC event.
The sale of the 21MW (AC) Blythe PV power plant to NRG marks the second move by First Solar to cash in on some of its hundreds of millions of potential dollars in project assets, following the announcement in early October to sell off the 20MW Sarnia, Ontario, site to Enbridge.
Both projects, when completed by the end of 2009 (yup, that's right--First's Alan Bernheimer confirmed they'll be done next month), will be among the largest active PV systems--and certainly thelargest thin-film arrays--in North America. Florida Power & Light’s recently activated crystalline-silicon-powered 25MW DeSoto Next Generation Solar Energy Center--which made me smile even before I had my morning coffee when I saw President Obama speaking at the center on CNN last month, with its thousands of solar panels lined up behind him--is the biggest in the States, at least for now.
Two more projects in First Solar’s pipeline will come online by the end of 2010 that will dwarf the Florida installation—the 30MW (AC) ground-mounted system being built for electric power supplier Tri-State in New Mexico and the 48MW (AC) added to the existing 10MW at the Sempra Boulder City/Copper Mountain site in Nevada. Although double-digit megawatt-scale PV systems remain rare, especially in North America, in a few years they will become more commonplace and triple-digit beasts will start to colonize the earth.
Since a Short Takes blog would not be complete without mention of the copper-indium-gallium-(di)selenide TFPV community, congrats to German CIGS-on-plastic company Solarion for successfully (and internally) testing its flex cells under the rigors of the IEC 61646 damp-heat test regimen--a thousand hours at 85% relative humidity and 85°C. Solarion’s main polymeric competitor, Ascent Solar, made a similar announcement in August. These results as well as recent updates from Global Solar and several materials companies suggest serious progress is being made on the main bugaboo of flexible CIGS—a manufacturable, relatively inexpensive yet durable moisture encapsulation layer.
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SourceLabels: CIGS, First Solar Inc, FSLR, miasole, Solar News, Solar Projects
Huge market in solar shingles
NEW YORK (Reuters) - Dow Chemical Co said on Monday it would begin selling a new rooftop shingle next year that converts sunlight into electricity -- and could generate $5 billion in revenue by 2015 for the company.
The new solar shingles can be integrated into rooftops with standard asphalt shingles, Dow said, and will be introduced in 2010 before a wider roll-out in 2011.
"We're looking at this one product that could generate $5 billion in revenue by 2015 and $10 billion by 2020," Jane Palmieri, managing director of Dow Solar Solutions, told Reuters in an interview.
The shingle will use thin-film cells of copper indium gallium diselenide (CIGS), a photovoltaic material that typically is more efficient at turning sunlight into electricity than traditional polysilicon cells.
Dow is using CIGS cells that operate at higher than 10 percent efficiency, below the efficiencies for the top polysilicon cells -- but would cost 10 to 15 percent less on a per watt basis.
Labels: CIGS, Solar News, solar panels, Solar Stocks, solarstocks
Solar: Silicon vs CIGS
Silicon Solar Panel technology is the most dominant material being use these days, but new startups such as Miasolé and Nanosolar showed that a new kind of material, that although being less efficient, is several times cheaper and easier to use in flexible multiple forms. One of these thin film materials is CIGS(Copper Indium Gallium Diselenide)
Two years ago we had a shortage of polysilicon, but with today's supply and current demand, there should be no problem for companies like SunTech Power (STP) to comply with the polysilicon demand.
Thin films (ex. CIGS) are cheaper, so cheap that we could compare it to the cost of printing ink on paper.
Thin-film production from companies such as Evergreen Solar, and Energy Conversion Devices and First Solar were groing strong in the last two years, but now faces the competition from Silicon panels, that are more efficient.
The booming solar industry is in the midst of an argument over which material will become dominant in the future for harvesting sunlight and turning it into electricity.
There is a good and detailed article about this issue over at CNET. You can read it here:
Silicon vs. CIGSIt's an old article but still usefull, even if we no longer face a polysilicon shortage at the moment.
Labels: CIGS, Copper Indium Gallium Diselenide, ESLR, FSLR, Polysilicon, Polysilicon shortage, solar panels, Solar power, Solar Technology, STP
Solar Gigabucks
Two new articles at Wired.com check them out:
Solar Goes From Gardens to GigabucksFREMONT, California -- Solar cells have been converting sunlight into electricity for years, but scientists have been much less successful at turning that technology into money.
Now, in a staid Bay Area office park, a converted hard-drive factory with a shiny new façade has begun churning out unconventional solar tubes that could change the economics of solar power.
Read the rest
hereLabels: CIGS, solar, Solar Energy Products, Solar power, wired
Last post of 2007
This is the last of 2007, and hopefully next year will bring more activity to this blog.
So the latest news on solar energy are...
Thin film solar cells are coming finally in mass production:
Solar energy 'revolution' brings green power closerThe holy grail of renewable energy came a step closer yesterday as thousands of mass-produced wafer-thin solar cells printed on aluminium film rolled off a production line in California, heralding what British scientists called "a revolution" in generating electricity.
The solar panels produced by a Silicon Valley start-up company, Nanosolar, are radically different from the kind that European consumers are increasingly buying to generate power from their own roofs. Printed like a newspaper directly on to aluminium foil, they are flexible, light and, if you believe the company, expected to make it as cheap to produce electricity from sunlight as from coal.
Yesterday Nanosolar said its order books were full until mid-2009 and that a second factory would soon open in Germany where demand for solar power has rocketed. Britain was unlikely to benefit from the technology for some years because other countries paid better money for renewable electricity, it added.
Full article at
guardian.co.ukOther articles:
Best Stocks for 2008: Block buyer bets on First Solar (FSLR)Drilling up’ into space for energy
While great nations fretted over coal, oil and global warming, one of the smallest at the U.N. climate conference was looking toward the heavens for its energy.
Read the rest at:
Daily Times ArticleLabels: CIGS, FSLR, solar cells, Solar Energy Products, Thin film solar cells
Solar Stocks falling along with oil prices
Today, Suntech Power Holdings (STP), had one of the biggest one day correction moves, along with the whole solar stock sector going down, mainly because of the falling price of oil.
Daystar Tech (DSTI) continues further into the red, with no good news in sight, this should be the solar energy stock everyone should avoid.
As the price of oil goes down, solar energy becomes less competitive, and therefore the solar energy group does tend to move according to the performance of fossil fuels.
The losses for today:
STP -3.8%
SPWR -1.2%
CSIQ -3.4%
DSTI -16.56%
On the other hand, some stocks actually did perform as good as the semis sector:
ENER +5,14%
HOKU +4,33%
Meanwhile, R&D Magazine featured CIGS solar technology as one hot technology for 2007, you can read the article
here... the limited supply and high cost of polysilicon, which is used by 90% of PV solar cell manufacturers.
The good news is there have been major technical break-throughs made in thin-film PVs eliminating the need for polysilicon altogether. ...
Labels: CIGS, CSIQ, DSTI, ENER, HOKU, SPWR, STP
Polysilicon shortage, again...
The well known polysilicon shortage continues, know probably continuing into the next decade until the industry can bring sufficient material volumes into the supply chain.
Until then, new tecnologies like
CIGS will continue to spread, and more companies are expecting to only use thin-film materials in their next solar cell products.
"The tight polysilicon market could last two years longer than previously expected," possibly continuing to 2010 or 2011
you can read the full article in the
Electronic Engineering Times Asia,
here:
Polysilicon shortage could persistLabels: CIGS, Polysilicon, Polysilicon shortage
