THIN FILM SOLAR PANELS

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Thin Film Solar Roof Top Expansion

Wesley Clark, the retired U.S. Army general who ran for president in 2004, joined the board of SoloPower Inc., which is seeking to increase production.

Clark’s expertise in government and in international markets will help the company reach potential new customers in U.S., Japan, South Korea and Italy, San Jose, California-based SoloPower said today in a statement.

SoloPower operates a plant in San Jose and is building another in Portland, Oregon, which will eventually have annual production capacity of about 400 megawatts. The company’s thin- film solar panels are produced on flexible rolls of steel and weigh less than standard, polysilicon-based photovoltaic products, Clark said in an interview.

“I think the idea of going after rooftops with lightweight solar panels is a winning strategy,” Clark said. “The U.S. has hundreds of miles of big-box rooftops not designed to hold the weight of massive, glass-based solar panels.”

Clark is a member of the Clinton Global Initiative’s energy and climate-change advisory board and served as supreme allied commander Europe for NATO, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization.

SoloPower’s investors include Hudson Clean Energy Partners, Crosslink Capital Inc. and Convexa AS.

NRG Energy Inc (NYSE: NRG) is teaming up with First Solar (NASDAQ: FSLR) for its Tucson, Arizona solar project.

First Solar will build the 26-megawatt Avra Valley project using its thin-film solar panels.

The structures will also include a single-axis tracker system, another specialty of First Solar, which tracks the sun’s arc across the sky to maximize production efficiency.

The system is particularly beneficial in the middle of the day, when the sun is at its highest and most powerful, in its ability to aim the panels in the most direct line of light.

NRG has created a 20-year power purchase agreement with Tucson Electric Power, a sector of UniSource Energy Corp (NYSE: UNS), to sell the solar power.

The companies plan to begin construction as early as this month, hoping to have it completed by the end of the year.

The project has the potential to create 200 jobs.

Will 2012 Belong to Solar Power

Changing government policies have not been kind to renewable energies over the past two years, and both solar and wind energies are heavily dependent on subsidies. 2010 was a tough one for the wind business, with government support declining markedly, thus affecting demand. In 2011, demand and pricing stabilised for wind, but solar energy experienced what may be the worst year in its history. 2012 will be marginally better for solar, but only marginally.

Fortunately, over the long term, there will be place for both these technologies in a country’s energy portfolio. Wind power is already economic in terms of cost per watt, but its output curve doesn’t match the consumer demand curve very well. Therefore, its energy storage technology has to improve. Solar’s output curve closely matches demand in most countries, but its cost per watt has to get a whole lot better.

So, what happened to solar energy? Subsidies were under pressure, particularly in the large European markets. Demand in the US did not pick up as anticipated, adding further pressure. Then, there was an incredible amount of overcapacity in the solar industry, leading to cut-throat competition, (pushing) prices down. The last thing to happen was the fall in the price of polycrystalline silicon, which crashed to $38-45 a kg. You would think that the declining raw material cost would help the profitability of an industry. But, in this case, the decline was so great that it upset the underlying economics.

The long-term, average price of electronic grade crystalline silicon is $45 a kg. There have been troughs — $25 a kg in 2002 — and peaks — $450 a kg in 2009. Adding polysilicon capacity is expensive and, because it’s nearly impossible to marginally increase output, adding capacity shocks the supply-demand balance. The industry swings between periods of ‘feast and famine’ but what was unusual this time was that instead of the semi-conductor industry driving the economics, it was the solar industry.

A lot of manufacturers in the solar value chain based their strategies on the high price of silicon that existed in 2008 and 2009. But when the prices of polycrystalline silicon fell, all those projects became unviable. Almost 80 per cent of global solar panels are based on some kind of metallic silicon technology. The remainder uses thin film technology. Most thin film companies had come up to provide a substitute to the expensive polysilicon and had based their plans on the price of silicon remaining at $100, $200 or even $400 a kg. When the price of polysilicon crashed, they lost their reason for existence.

So, there was reduced demand because of lower government subsidies, massive overcapacity among the silicon-based manufacturers, and a surfeit of new, thin film manufacturers. A perfect storm.

I have never been an advocate of large solar farms that have to distribute power over the main grid. Solar electricity is perhaps the most expensive in terms of dollars per watt. Solar power itself can cost between 12 and 16 cents a kilowatt-hour. This is comparable to what an individual in California pays for the grid power at about 20 cents a kilowatt-hour. But this is the cost of solar power at the point of manufacture. When you create a solar farm and try to distribute it over hundreds of miles, it just becomes too expensive. Without heavy subsidies, a solar farm that mimics a centralised generating system is absolutely uneconomical. Some subsidy is okay, but basing an industry on long-term continuing subsidy is not a good idea.

Don’t get me wrong. Solar can be a perfect solution for a village that hasn’t been touched by electricity. Put up a small solar farm and create a local grid to supply power. But don’t try and run the power over the main grid.

An efficient coal plant may cost 2.5 cents a kilowatt-hour (kWh); a nuclear plant is 4-6 cents a kWh; wind power can be 5-7 cents per kWh, and solar at least double that. And, of course, wind and solar output are both governed by nature. The flip-side is that both are zero-carbon, renewable power sources that don’t depend on imported energy sources. Most countries will want to use both in some measure.

Warren Buffett Buys into Thin Film Solar Panels

Warren Buffett’s MidAmerican Energy Holdings unit agreed to buy the $2 billion Topaz project in California, branching into solar power after the industry was clobbered in stock markets around the world.

The Topaz Solar Farm in San Luis Obispo County will be one of the largest photovoltaic power plants in the world and is being developed by the seller, First Solar Inc. (FSLR) of Tempe, Arizona, according to a joint statement today from the companies. Financial terms weren’t disclosed.

Buffett’s Iowa-based natural gas and power supplier struck the deal after First Solar failed to get a U.S. government loan guarantee for the project that will use First Solar’s thin-film solar panels. The manufacturer’s shares have fallen 65 percent this year, matching the 65 percent drop in the Bloomberg Industry Global Leaders Large Solar Energy index.

Is U.S. Solar Industry Up to Challenge?

“I don’t care about Solyndra,” General Electric (GE) CEO Jeffrey Immelt said at Columbia University recently.

It was an unmistakable reminder, if not a declaration, that there is much more to the solar power story than the ill-fated bankruptcy of one company. A failure which set off a wave of investor negativity not only for solar stocks now, but which led to many investors questioning the future of the solar industry.

Some of the reaction by solar companies in the US was to complain loudly about China’s practices in its solar industry, a complaint which maintains China’s subsidies were out of bounds according to World Trade Organization rules, as well as the accusation that Chinese solar companies were dumping their solar panel products on the market and causing a steep decline in price. In short, these US companies were crying foul, as in unfair competition.

GE Picks Up the Gauntlet
For Immelt’s part, it was clear that GE’s response was different. GE is building a factory to produce the thin-film solar panels in Germany at a cost of $300 million, according to a Bloomberg report.

Thin film, or cadmium telluride, is considered by some in the industry to be the potentially more advanced solar technology compared to the polysilicon, or pure crystalline technology largely prevalent in the industry today. While others dispute this, and claim polysilicon is more efficient, GE and US industry leader First Solar (FSLR) are committed to thin film.