Your daily dose of photovoltaic technology developments and solar news

There’s only a handful of industry veterans who have invested as much blood, sweat, tears, and time into the development of flexible thin-film solar photovoltaics as Jeff Britt. He joined Global Solar Energy in 1998, when the company’s copper-indium-gallium-(di)selenide technology was an R&D project, and any product commercialization years away.

One of Silicon Valley’s CIGS thin-film PV contingent that has been flying off the radar since the middle of 2009 is SoloPower. After I spoke with CTO Bulent Basol at the IEEE PVSC in early June, the company went through a change of command later that month. Lou DiNardo took over the CEO reins from contentious cofounder Houmayoun Talieh, with Basol, the other cofounder, also exiting.

The idea seems simple enough: by depositing tricky photovoltaic thin films on a small, wafer-like substrate, much better compositional control, film uniformity, and defectivity levels—and higher conversion efficiencies--can be achieved than on a large-area flat glass or flexible web surface. Throw in a reliable, low-cost processing method, with high-volume throughput capabilities proven in another industry that would be easily portable to PV applications, and the approach has merit as a way to quickly scale from lab to pilot to commercial production levels. That’s the nutshell value proposition that copper-indium-gallium-(di)selenide development stager XsunX is working on with its equipment partner, Intevac, a well-established purveyor of hard-disk-drive and semiconductor manufacturing gear. Despite the intriguing possibilities of modifying existing HDD and IC systems and processes for production of CIGS cells, nagging doubts about one of those companies can’t be ignored.

While Q-Cells weathers the price erosions and market uncertainties of the crystalline-silicon sector, holding its cSi cellmaking production capacity steady for now, its top-performing thin-film unit and flagship of the new Q-Cells Modules brand—Solibro—is about to surpass the century nameplate mark as its second manufacturing plant comes online. The German copper-indium-gallium-(di)selenide company with Swedish roots will have 90MW of nominal capacity to go with its existing 45MW, reaching a total of 135MW, according to Q-Cells boss, Anton Milner.

Although plenty of companies developing and manufacturing copper-indium-(di)sulfide/copper-indium-gallium-(di)selenide (CIS/CIGS) thin-film PV have chosen to use flexible materials as their substrates of choice, only one employs copper metal tape--Odersun. Chinese firm Advanced Technology & Materials has been along for the ride with the German firm as a strategic investor and research partner since 2004.

Farhad Moghadam loves to make semiconductor analogies when he talks about his corner of solar photovoltaics. The former Applied Materials and Intel exec is wearing a new hat these days as he marks his third month as president/CEO of Ascent Solar. The company just announced its latest conversion efficiency numbers for its copper-indium-gallium-(di)selenide thin-film PV cells (14.1% peak) and modules (11.7% peak, 10.5%-plus median) and will be ramping its roll-to-roll CIGS-on-polyimide process to volume scale in its Thornton, CO, factory early next year.

HAMBURG, GERMANY--Chip Shots hasn’t been AWOL this week, but engaged on the frontlines and back corridors of the annual European Photovoltaic Solar Energy Conference and Exhibition here. The weather has been mild in Germany’s main port and second-biggest city, and the energy and information flow at the 24th edition of EU PVSEC intense.

On the ninth day of the ninth month of the ninth year, a fortuitous string of the second-luckiest number in Chinese lore, the day that President Obama addresses the U.S. Congress about health care, Apple unveils iTunes 9.0, and the Beatles’ remastered album catalog hits the retail world, Nanosolar has come out with some remastering of its own.

The past week or so has been one of the most tumultuous in recent memory for the solar photovoltaic manufacturing community. The earnings season is upon us, and some of the company news has been downright scary, especially from the likes of Q-Cells and others that have seen the bottom fall out of their markets and have had to take drastic steps to survive, such as the Q’s plant shutdown and layoffs.

PHILADELPHIA—No one was jonesing for CIGS at last week's IEEE Photovoltaic Specialists Conference—copper-indium-gallium-(di)selenide thin film-related programming, that is. Several oral and poster sessions were dedicated to the technology (or, in some cases, its copper-indium-sulfide cousin), while CIGS-specific presentations on window and contact layers as well as characterization and analysis approaches were also prevalent in other sessions. For a PV food group with less than 1% market share of the installed system base, CIGS had a mighty presence at the annual event.