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My plan for this year’s Intersolar North America was deceptively simple: to cut a trail across the photovoltaic R&D, production, and balance-of-systems value-chain terrain showcased at the event and sample its eclecticism. The pathway took me from big-idea early stagers to gigawatt-scale global players, across the realms of crystalline silicon, thin film, and concentrator PV material sets, from solder masters to microinverter disruptors to tracking system aspirants. Was the journey worth it? Absolutely, even if I didn’t turn up any megatrends or bombshell scoops. Sometimes though, it’s the small discoveries that resonate.
One recurring theme—new site selection and existing site expansion—surfaced in many meetings, as companies told me how they are looking to increase their operational footprint.
Soitec, which plans to build a 200MW CPV factory in San Diego to supply several projects with SDG&E-signed PPAs, has narrowed its choices down to a few sites in the Southern California county and will announce its final decision in mid-September, according to solar division VP Hansjörg Lerchenmüller. Although still in the hunt for a US DOE loan guarantee, the parent company just closed a €150 million fund-raising round, most of which is earmarked for the San Diego production facility.
Recently awarded a conditional commitment for a $150 million DOE loan guarantee of its own, 1366 Technologies will be siting its first 20MW manufacturing plant in Massachusetts next year. Biz dev VP Craig Lund told me that 2012 will be the year of building, procuring, and setting up of the supply chain, with 2013 as the “first real year of operations.” Some 50% of the output of the new plant is already under contract.
Once the company’s innovative crystalline-silicon “direct wafer” production process passes qualification and the design of its specialized “one wafer every 20 seconds” furnace tool is frozen, the plan is to grow to gigawatt level in phases over the following five years. With the DOE loan backing its play and providing “a more credible path to scale” as well as giving other potential investors a level of certainty around the financing, Lund claimed that 1366 will only need to raise a fifth of the capital to get to gigawatt compared to a vertically integrated company.
Another firm with site selection on its mind is flexible thin-film copper-indium-gallium-(di)selenide manufacturer Global Solar. Jean-Noel Poirier said that the company’s main focus is on building-integrated PV—especially those CIGS-embedded “solar shingles done in partnership with Dow. Big back-end lamination tools are being installed and qual’ed in Global’s Tucson and Berlin fabs, with first shipments to an eager pipeline of customers set to begin in August.
The marketing and biz dev VP noted that with the two factories’ combined 75MW capacity expected to be fully utilized by sometime next year, the company is actively shopping around for new manufacturing locations, in the US and elsewhere, as well as looking for the funding to make any such 2013 factory expansion move a reality. He also mentioned that the firm has brought manufacturing vet Kirk Shockley on board as its new COO, a move that should help Global tighten up its operations during its anticipated production ramp.
A new face in the North American market, tracking system provider TecnoSun Solar, hopes to have a US production facility equipped and shipping its first products within six months, according to CEO Greg Knudson. The company’s choice of the University of Toledo’s Nietzsche Commercialization Complex as its regional HQ comes as no surprise, since the new chief exec was managing director of Rocket Ventures and technology VP at the Regional Growth Partnership, both based in—and focused on-- northwest Ohio.
Knudson told me that the company already has about 3MW of project orders in its pipeline, with several more megawatts percolating in the letter-of-intent and quoting stages. Both roof- and ground-mount applications are in the mix. He characterized the German-designed systems as “simple, low-profile trackers,” with fewer parts than competing units. One drive motor runs 120 systems—or 240 panels—on its own. While touting a 10-year warranty, accelerated reliability and endurance test data have shown 16-year lifetimes.
As a young company pursuing an outsourced manufacturing model, microinverter upstart SolarBridge Technologies can expend less effort on production and focus more on a different sort of site selection process—thousands of potential residential and small commercial PV system installation locations. The Austin, TX-based firm, which partners with EMS provider Celestica, has chosen to take a fresh approach to the market: selling its micros directly to the moduling companies, rather than through channel partners, with the panels shipping pretested to the field as a single product, ready for AC hookup.
Marketing VP Joe Scarci told me the firm is working with many of the leading c-Si modcos, as evidenced by displays of AUO, Kyocera, and Hanwha SolarOne panels at the company’s Intersolar booth. He explained that the customers don’t take SolarBridge’s 25-year warranty at face value, performing extensive testing “to beat the micros to death.”
The elimination of “failure-prone components” such as oscillators and electrolytic or tantalum capacitors in favor of an architecture based on more reliable film capacitors is the reason for SolarBridge’s technical superiority, he said.
Each unit is optimized for each customer, he continued, citing examples of shorter or longer DC cabling and different methods of attaching the micro to the module frames. Examples could be seen on the panels on display, as the small inverter unit sat flush under the frame edge on a Kyocera, but protruded a bit on the AUO and Hanwha (although it will soon be redesigned to be more flush, he said). On the drawing board are plans to more fully integrate the micros and mods, including the eventual elimination of the junction box and DC cable.
Such attention to detail and willingness to respond to customer needs also resides in another company occupying a far-different part of the PV value chain—Indium Corp. The venerable Clinton, NY-based materials supplier (who has plenty of production capacity) plays in both the crystalline and thin-film manufacturing spaces. Its rotary and planar sputtering targets help provide uniform deposition of key films (CuGa, etc.) in many CIGS fabs, while a family of fluxes, tabbing/bussing ribbons, and metallization pastes primes the crystalline supply chain.
Indium’s Jim Hisert related a specific example of a customer request leading to an optimized product. With power ratings reaching 250W and more, c-Si module makers said they wanted narrower ribbon, to reduce cell shadowing, but that they also needed thicker ribbon, to provide more current—or as the PV apps engineer put it, a different aspect ratio was required, one both tighter and taller.
Taking advantage of the company’s decades of experience taming solder and its ability to prototype new material specifications and concoctions quickly, Hisert and his colleagues shrank the copper ribbon width from 2mm to <1.5mm, and boosted the thickness from 0.1mm to >0.2mm.
New, improved moduling ribbon may not be the sexy stuff of game-changing breakthrough, but it’s one of those little innovations that keeps the trek fresh.
