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Intel invests again in PV, getting clarity from Masdar, Suniva starts up solar-cell line
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Intel continues its investment binge in solar photovoltaics ventures with the announcement of a $20 million funding of thin-film PV company, Trony Solar Holdings, its first in China. The Shenzhen-based firm says it plans to use the money to build out its manufacturing capacity from 35 MW to 105 MW as well as augment its R&D efforts.
The news marks the third time this year that the microprocessor megacorp's internal VC arm has put money into solar manufacturers, going back to the $50 million rollout/spinout of crystalline-silicon cell maker Spectrawatt in June and the July announcement of a 24 million Euro chunk of change invested in the German copper indium gallium (di)selenide TFPV manufacturer, Sulfurcell. If the $12.5 million placed in July with Voltaix (a semiconductor and PV gas and chemicals company) is factored in, the total amount invested in solar by Intel in a matter of months approaches $100 million.
With the funding of Trony, Intel has backed crystalline silicon, amorphous-silicon thin film, CIGS thin film, and PV materials companies, diversifying its holdings and keeping its options open by placing bets on several key PV technologies. What's missing? A direct investment in any of First Solar's cadmium-telluride (CdTe) upstart competitors nor any dollars (or Euro) directed toward the emerging dye-sensitized and organic PV sectors.
My posting on Abu Dhabi's Masdar Initiative last week elicited a response from my source for the column, Steve Geiger, director of the PV industries unit. With the news that fellow United Arab Emirates member Dubai has jumped into the PV arena, a story that has seen its share of inaccurate reporting about how the new Solar Technologies FZE will be the first and/or largest photovoltaics manufacturer in the region (wrong on both counts--Masdar's got that locked up), I need to get my own factual house in order on the Abu Dhabian front.
"I have yet to see an article get all the Masdar facts right," Geiger wrote me. "There’s just too many moving parts." He then offered some corrections and clarifications to my piece.
Of the five units making up the initiative, the one he calls "utilities and asset management" (I missed the "and") combines a cleantech fund and plans for concentrated solar thermal and hydrogen-fired power plants. He says the tender offers went out for the CSP project, a trough-based 100-MW system that will feed the Abu Dhabi grid. "Four have been shortlisted," although "bids just opened last week." He expects a decision to be made in the "near future."
As for the H2 power plant, the group is "half way through a detailed feasibility study." If the plan proceeds, the utility site would be the "world's largest hydrogen-fired plant," according to Geiger. The partner on the 500-MW, $2 billion plant is Hydrogen Energy (a BP/Rio Tinto joint venture). The technology employed would split "natural gas currently being injected into oil wells into H2 and CO2," he explains, with the hydrogen "burned to produce clean power while the CO2 is reinjected as a gas substitute."
Geiger also offered more granularity on the amount and mix of renewable energies that Masdar City will receive. The total will be "about 220 MW," of which 150 MW will come from solar (not 40 MW as I reported), and will also include "a bit from wind and the rest from waste-to-energy" sources. There's a seven-year timeline for reaching that 150 MW of PV power, with the "first 10 MW already secured" (half x-Si, half TFPV) and set to be installed by Q1 2009.
As for Masdar's PV manufacturing plans, Geiger also made clear that the company's "'phase 1' deal involves a ~$600 million investment into amorphous-silicon thin-film via an AMAT solution; we will scale this to around $2 billion (1 GW), but not necessarily only on an AMAT solution." The company's current roadmap shows a target date of 2013 for reaching that 1-GW level of production.
I asked him when he expects to make the decision on the equipment for "phase 2" and whether the other TFPV production plants that push the total to 1 GW will be built in Abu Dhabi or in the emirate and other locations. The decision on which tool solution will be deployed for Masdar's second phase should be reached by "early 2010," he said. As for the rest of the production ramp details, the company "will at least double the German and AD plants, with a third factory in the southwest U.S. and possibly a plant in Asia. We feel to truly be a global player you should be close to the markets. It's a lot of glass to move around."
Speaking of manufacturing, crystalline-silicon solar-cell start-up Suniva has turned on its factory, according to a report in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. The announcement of commercial (albeit not yet volume) production comes about five months after the Georgia Tech spinoff company decided on the Norcross, GA, location and less than a year since Suniva first came on the scene (during which time the firm has signed nearly a billion dollars in long-term module deals with Solon and Titan Energy).
The company's Bryan Ashley said in an August 20 blog post that Suniva's initial production line was originally specified at 25-MW, but the start-up's team "has made improvements that enable us to have an initial capacity of 32 MW.... As we continue to gain more customers, we're planning additional lines to expand capacity to more than 160 MW over the next two years." Deliveries of the cells are "set to begin...in 2009, although smaller shipments will begin late this year."
