Not content with its acquisitions of Solibro, MiaSolé and Global Solar Energy, Hanergy Holding is ‘aggressively’ looking to make further CIGS thin-film IP and company acquisitions as it plans to be the global leader in the sector.
In a financial filing, Hanergy noted that so far the three thin-film acquisitions provided the company with the two mainstream CIGS technologies in the form of the co-evaporation manufacturing process, via Solibro, and the sputtering manufacturing process, via the MiaSolé purchase.
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Hanergy reiterated plans to further develop a product line that leads the market in both high conversion efficiencies with the lowest production cost, notably through high-volume production being located in China.
The product lines, all based on CIGS technology, included both glass/glass for conventional PV markets and flexible thin-film modules to cover the building-integrated and PV and building-applied PV markets.
MiaSolé IP transfer
Hanergy also announced that it had transferred all the intellectual property (IP) rights of MiaSolé to its subsidiaries involved in manufacturing along the same lines of the recent transfer of Solibro’s IP.
The company said that an unidentified third party valued the IP transfer at approximately US$57 million, which included 33 listed patents and 125 listed applications, according to Hanergy.
MiaSolé is known for its 15.5% conversion efficiency rate for its standard size module (champion module) that was certified by the US National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL).
MiaSolé was said to have shipped more than 80MW of modules, including flexible CIGS substrates to over 30 customers in five continents.
Finlay Colville, vice president of NPD Solarbuzz, recently noted in a company blog that in the first phase of CIGS company history, 40 companies had hoped to ramp production to the gigawatt level, yet only one company, Solar Frontier, had achieved that goal in 2013.
In the second phase of CIGS history, much of it yet to be written, Colville acknowledges that both Hanergy and TSMC could prove successful where the majority had not.
Hanergy is betting on CIGS gaining significant market share in coming years and taking a 30% share of the global PV market by 2020.