THIN FILM SOLAR PANELS

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GE Supplying Thin Film Solar Panels to Grand Ridge Solar Project

ENP Newswire – 20 January 2012

Release date- 18012012 – SCHENECTADY, N.Y. – GE (NYSE: GE) today announced an agreement to supply 23 megawatts of advanced solar equipment to Invenergy.

Invenergy will install the solar equipment at its Grand Ridge Solar project (‘Grand Ridge Solar’), now under construction in Illinois. When completed in mid-2012, Grand Ridge Solar will be the largest solar farm in the Midwest.

The Grand Ridge Solar site is located in La Salle County, Ill., adjacent to the company’s Grand Ridge Wind project (‘Grand Ridge Wind’). Invenergy, a leading clean energy company and the nation’s largest independent wind power generation company, owns and operates Grand Ridge Wind, where 140 of GE’s 1.5 MW series wind turbines are providing 210 MW of power.

‘As we look to continue the expansion of our clean energy portfolio, advancements in technology have made solar a more competitive solution,’ said Michael Polsky, Invenergy’s president and chief executive officer. ‘Having installed over 1,500 of GE’s wind turbines at projects across the United States, integrating GE’s solar technology is a natural fit.’

In addition to supplying thin film solar panels to Grand Ridge Solar, GE also will supply packaged inverter skids that include Brilliance inverters, transformers and re-combiners, as well as GE SunIQ plant controls. The SunIQ platform will enhance the grid integration capability of the solar plant.

GE Advancements in Solar Technology

Late last year, GE announced its plans to build the country’s largest solar panel factory in Aurora, Colo. At capacity, the new factory will produce enough panels per year to power 80,000 homes and will highlight a $ 600 million investment in GE’s solar business.

Colorado also is home to GE Energy’s thin film solar pilot line, where joint technology advancements from GE’s Global Research Center and PrimeStar Solar have been validated and tested. GE completed the acquisition of PrimeStar last year.

Solar panels produced in the new Colorado factory will be more efficient, lighter weight and larger than conventional thin film panels. High efficiency is a key component of GE’s commitment to offer advanced solar products which reduces the total cost of electricity for utilities and consumers.

Lighter panels will allow easier installation and facilitate important applications such as commercial rooftop systems. Larger-sized panels help to lower total system cost by reducing the amount of racking and electrical components required.

Thin Film Solar Firms Confident Despite Industry Challenges

A year after a U.S. senator said northwest Ohio’s solar-panel industry was helping the state to become known as “the Silicon Valley of clean energy,” industry experts predict the global industry will undergo a major shakeout that will break all but a handful of solar panel producers worldwide.

The bold forecast raises questions about the future of the Toledo area’s three panel makers, with one more coming next year.

Each of the firms with local operations — First Solar Inc., Xunlight Corp., Willard & Kelsey Group LLC, and, building a plant in Napoleon, Isofoton North America — contends it makes a particular type of panel that is in demand and is competitively priced, so it will survive any industry consolidation.

The chief executive of China’s Trina Solar Ltd., the world’s fifth-largest solar panel maker, predicted recently that by 2015 two-thirds of the industry’s solar-related companies will face mergers, acquisitions, or bankruptcy.

And by 2020, Jifan Gao said, just 15 solar firms will be left — five each in of three major segments: photovoltaic (solar) panels, solar energy-absorbing wafers and ingots, and production of raw materials such as polysilicon, the most commonly used material in solar panel manufacturing.

Jeffrey Pichel, an industry analyst at Jefferies & Co., has forecast a consolidation of the industry for three years.

“It’s not so revolutionary an idea,” he said. Already, three large U.S. solar companies — Solyndra LLC, Evergreen Solar, and SpectraWatt — have gone bankrupt. A fourth, BP Solar, halted manufacturing in the spring.

Fitch Ratings Ltd. said recently that solar power companies are likely to encounter tough conditions for their public stock, and First Solar, the world’s largest maker of thin-film panels, said competitors are “desperate” to sell inventory after adding too much factory capacity, leading to a supply glut.

Industry pressures

Industry pressures have affected the existing three. First Solar has cut its sales and margin forecasts to reflect slower demand growth and stiffer competition.

Xunlight laid off 30 employees in May after an Italian firm delayed payment on a panel order.

Willard & Kelsey planned to have two production lines and 250 workers by now, but an executive said the poor economy and slow demand have hindered financing for a second line.

Xunming Deng, chief executive at Xunlight, said, “We will be one of those survivors. Our products are unique and different and we’re starting at a much more premium price.”

Tom Kimbis, vice president of strategy and external affairs for the Solar Energy Industries Association, which has 1,100 member companies, said intense competition will produce failures, mergers, acquisitions, and bankruptcies.

Still, there will be newcomers to the industry, he said, adding,

“The Internet didn’t shut down because Netscape disappeared.”

Different technology

Existing Toledo area solar firms differ from others globally by technology.

First Solar, Xunlight, and Willard & Kelsey all make thin-film solar panels, a relatively small segment of the overall industry.

In thin-film production, solar energy-absorbing coatings are applied directly onto a glass panel.

Conventional panels, which dominate the industry, use energy-absorbing wafers that are attached to a panel, making them heavier than thin-film modules.

Xunlight’s modules are flexible. Mr. Deng, the CEO, said last week that his company had a setback this year but it is still selling product and just received a payment up front from a European buyer for 100 kilowatts of panels.

“We are enjoying the premium price on the flexible process we use … and that is why we believe we have a bright future,” he said.

Willard & Kelsey’s Mr. Cicak said solar is “going to be the cheapest form of electricity, and it’s going to continue to get lower in cost.”

Thin Film Solar Panel Forecast

Thin Film Solar Markets at $2.9 billion in 2010 are set to grow to $44 billion by 2017, with the total solar energy market reaching $ 1 trillion sometime in the middle of 2021.

‘Thin Film Solar Technology Market Shares, Strategies, and Forecasts, Worldwide, 2011? study has 496 pages, 189 tables and figures. Thin film solar energy units are evolving vacuum based solid state technology.

The worldwide demand for energy is steadily increasing, doubling every 15 years. The major effort is to sustain growth in the electricity supply without causing irreversible harm to the environment. Solar energy has rapidly grown as a clean, renewable alternative to limited fossil fuels. Recognition of the need to reduce reliance on coal and fossil fuels is driving interest in solar energy.

Thin film solar panel and systems market segments include CadTel. CadTel is attracting more attention than CIGS thin film. Thin film silicon solar cells use significantly less silicon, about 1/100th the thickness of the normal silicon layer. The thin film silicon solar cells production process is far shorter than that for crystalline silicon solar cells. Therefore thin film silicon solar cells are expected to greatly expand the potential of solar energy.

According to the lead author of the study, “grid parity has been reached by thin film solar energy products for many areas of the world.” When thin film solar systems are looked at over the 25 year useful life of the systems they provide very attractive payback.

GE to Make Thin Film Solar Panels

Light materials: Cadmium telluride, a semiconductor that’s good at absorbing light, can be used to make inexpensive solar panels.
Credit: GE

Energy

GE to Make Thin-Film Solar Panels

Its entrance to the market could help make solar power cheaper.

• Wednesday, March 24, 2010
• By Kevin Bullis

Audio »

GE has confirmed long-standing speculation that it plans to make thin-film solar panels that use a cadmium- and tellurium-based semiconductor to capture light and convert it into electricity. The GE move could put pressure on the only major cadmium-telluride solar-panel maker, Tempe, AZ-based First Solar, which could drive down prices for solar panels.

Last year, GE seemed to be getting out of the solar industry as it sold off crystalline-silicon solar-panel factories it had acquired in 2004. The company found that the market for such solar panels–which account for most of the solar panels sold worldwide–was too competitive for a relative newcomer, says Danielle Merfeld, GE’s solar technology platform leader.

As you may have heard, solar power is well on its way to rivaling coal and other traditional energy sources. In fact, costs are set to drop significantly in the next year or two. So the question becomes, which type of solar panel technology should you invest in? Which material is cheapest, and how efficient is it? The answer, friends, is thin-film solar. And its efficiency climbs every day.

Thin-Film Solar Panel Systems

Thin-film solar is hot. Many people find the sleek, paper-thin design more aesthetically pleasing than bulk solar, and it allows for all kinds of amazing building-integrated photovoltaic (BIPV) applications. Thin film is what makes it possible for solar to be coated on the facade of a building, for example, built into portable electronics or integrated discreetly onto window shades.

And advancements continue to emerge. Last month, thin-film solar cells made from copper indium gallium selenide (CIGS) reached an astounding 18.7% efficiency in laboratory tests. Using CIGS for thin film is ideal, but has yet to be implemented on a large scale.

So how much can you expect thin film to cost per watt? According to the NREL and Department of Energy:

“Costs are expected to drop to below $100/m² in volume production, and could reach even lower levels—well under $50/m², the DOE/NREL goal for thin films—when fully optimized. At these levels, thin-film modules will cost less than 50 cents per watt to manufacture, opening new markets such as cost-effective distributed power and utility production to thin-film electricity generation.”

Thin film is the technology to watch for in coming months. My guess is it paves the way for high-efficiency solar panels, ultimately driving costs down and solidifying the nationwide uptake of solar power we all know is overdue.