Six years after the US Department of Energy (DOE) awarded Nanosolar a US$42 million Solar American Initiative (SAI) Technology Pathway Partnership (TPP) grant, the company has advised that all 10 major tasks have been achieved or surpassed. The grant was originally awarded in 2006 for the development of large-scale PV systems for commercial buildings that would offer the best price per watt performance in the industry.
The DOE signed off on the company’s achievements earlier this month, which included reaching more than 13% cell power conversion efficiency on the production floor that now holds an annual capacity of 115MW, deploying 3.4MW of panels for pilot installations, a 550kW deployment for Camp Perry and a 2.88MW deployment in Oregon.
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Additionally, the company is expected to reach grid parity economics by 2015 and continues to gather performance and reliability data from third-party testing laboratories, which is to be analysed by independent engineering firms and institutions. Finally, Nanosolar has produced, sold and deployed at 14 sites around the world.
“Upon completion of the TPP grant, the Department of Energy indicated that Nanosolar met or exceeded every qualification,” said Eugenia Corrales, CEO of Nanosolar. “The close of this grant validates Nanosolar's ability to execute to plan. We continue to drive toward delivering the most cost-efficient solar electricity.”
Nanosolar acknowledged that the TPP project was completed with help from three partners including inverter technology and systems optimisation from Conergy and a mounting technology from Sunlink in a pilot installation by Suntechnics.