Cleantech Update

Miasole was founded by veterans of the hard disk industry with founder Dave Pearce who leveraged their expertise in hard disk manufacturing to introduce new manufacturing processes into the thin-film solar industry. In December 2006, the company's CEO announced that 50MW of manufacturing capacity as well as an IPO is imminent but the company failed to deliver on the milestone. In September 2007, semiconductor equipment executive Joseph Laia was brought in as CEO to move the company to volume production. The company has 40 MW of production capacity at its Santa Clara facility, and claims that as of May 2008 it was making modules at 9% to 10% efficiencies on those production tools. NREL has since independently verified two 10% Miasole CIGS modules. At this time, none of the company's founders is with the company any longer. Kannan Ramanathan, who served as chief research officer at Miasolé from 2006 to 2008 has left the company in November 2008. Dave Pearce stepped...

Photovoltaic Solar Modules / Germany February 4, 2009 This notice is to inform the public that the Export-Import Bank of the United States has received an application to guarantee approximately $15 million in commercial bank financing for the U.S. export of approximately $ 31 million worth of photovoltaic module manufacturing equipment and services for the construction of a new thin film photovoltaic production facility in Germany. The U.S. exports will enable the German company to produce approximately 21.5 megawatts (MW) worth of amorphous silicon thin film photovoltaic modules per year on average during the 8.5-year repayment term of the loan. Available information indicates that all of this new German production will be consumed in Germany. Please note that this transaction was first posted in the Federal Register on September 25, 2007. Interested parties may submit comments on this transaction by e-mail to economic.impact@exim.gov or by mail to 811 Vermont Avenue, NW., Room 1238...

Optisolar OptiSolar manufactures photovoltaic (PV) modules and produces power from our own large-scale solar farms . Our innovative manufacturing processes, technologies, and management strength are at the core of the OptiSolar Advantage. OptiSolar’s combination of proprietary manufacturing processes and innovative design yields affordable, durable, amorphous silicon thin-film solar PV panels that significantly reduce the cost of clean solar power. Amorphous silicon PV panels have been successfully used for over 20 years. Our technology helps utility companies meet their customers' daytime power demand and increases renewable energy supplies while reducing greenhouse emissions. OptiSolar, Inc. 31302 Huntwood Avenue Hayward, CA 94544 map/directions Phone: 510.401.5800 Fax: 510.401.5859 OptiSolar Farms Canada http://www.optisolarfarms.ca/ Corporate Communications mailto:Communicationscommunications@optisolar.com Business Development mailto:Developmentinfo@optisolar.com Supplier Man...

NanoSolar Nanosolar Utility Panel™. Specifically designed for utility-scale power plants, Nanosolar Utility Panel™ is the industry-best solution for MW-sized PV systems. A high-power, high-current panel, the Nanosolar Utility Panel™ features proprietary cell and panel design innovations that enable our panel product to have an entire factor more power and to carry 5-10 times more current than typical thin-film panels. Available wholesale to select system integrators and electric utilities. Nanosolar SolarPly™. Light-weight solar-electric cell foil which can be cut to any size. Non-fragile. No soldering required for electrical contact. Available wholesale to strategic partners. Additional products are presently in various stages of prototyping and development. Please subscribe to our mailing list to be notified. Q&A: Benefits? World's lowest-cost solar panel Designed to halven the balance-of-system cost relative to competitive panels. 25-year warranty. Want to Buy Panels? We a...

Heliovolt Opened their manufacturing plant in Austin TX on OCtober 24th, 2008, and expects their products to ready for sale in early 2009. HelioVolt’s FASST™ technology produces high-performance solar thin-film with pioneering time and materials efficiencies. 10 to 100 times faster than current processes. 100 times thinner than traditional silicon. Factor in the flexibility of custom shapes and sizes. Plus easy adaptability to multiple construction materials – glass, steel, metal, composites and some polymers. The result? Another industry revolution is born Rapid and revolutionary: Our patented solar “printing” process is a high-speed, large-area method for manufacturing silicon-free thin-film photovoltaics for commercial-scale production. Many times faster than other thin-film technologies, the real advantage of FASST™ is its unique ability to nano-engineer solar thin films. Flexible and customizable: HelioVolt can print directly onto multiple construction materials – glass, steel, m...

October 29th, 2008 Today, thin-film solar company First Solar and residential solar installer SolarCity made two announcements : The two companies have entered into a five-year agreement in which First Solar will supply 100 MW (megawatts) of its thin film solar modules to SolarCity. First Solar will begin delivering modules to SolarCity in Q1 2009. This agreement represents First Solar’s initial activity in the U.S. residential market. First Solar will make a $25 million equity investment in SolarCity. This is part of a $30 million round of financing that will support SolarCity’s continued U.S. expansion. SolarCity currently serves markets in California, Arizona and Oregon “The combination of First Solar’s modules with SolarCity’s innovative approach to designing, financing and maintaining complete solar solutions enables homeowners and small business owners to lower their electricity costs while reducing air pollution and the effects of global warming,” said Mike Ahearn, First Solar...

Module Manufacturers

Ron Kennedy on Renewable Energy and National Security

The thin-film variants heading for the photovoltaic market Ever new thin-film technologies are moving out of the laboratories into factories. But which one has the most promising future? The amorphous silicon cell, which as yet has by far the highest market share of all thin-film cells? Or the CIS cell of cadmium indium diselenide , favoured by the media in the past ten years? Or maybe the CIGS cell of copper, indium, gallium and selenide, whose conversion efficiency promises to be the highest? Optionally also in the CIGSSe variant with sulphide? Or the micromorphous silicon cell, which is claimed to better the amorphous silicon in efficiency, but is based on the practically infinitely available silicon? At least one thing is clear, and that is that in the thin-film sector, too, silicon will play a large part as a raw material. But with the small quantities of silicon thin-film modules need, the present scarcity is no serious problem. And the fact that silicon is a harmless substance m...

Aleo solar AG has very quickly become one of the largest manufacturers of solar modules in Europe. The success story of this company, and its marketing subsidiary aleo solar Deutschland GmbH, is reflected in the constant expansion of production capacities. With the construction of a second facility, which was built beside the already existing production halls, aleo solar increases its capacity to 90MW. Thus, the company which had already in 2004 increased its production to 35MW, continues its course of expansion, and is well positioned for the rapidly growing photovoltaic market. With the expansion of production capacities, the number of employees has also continued to increase. At the end of 2003, the company already had 107 staff; one year later there were 179. By the end of 2006, the number of employees at aleo solar AG and its marketing subsidiaries had increased to approx. 320. In Spain, in September 2005, aleo solar España SL and the marketing subsidiary aleo solar España distrib...

Johanna Solar Technology of Germany is licensing distribution rights for up to 80% of its CIGSSe (copper indium gallium sulfur selenide) thin-film solar modules to aleo solar [ed. all-lowercase correct], also of Germany. Both firms will cooperate in the product launch: aleo will be responsible for product branding, while Johanna Solar will be responsible for technology branding (products will bear the label “made by Johanna”). The agreement is for at least five years. “This agreement opens up excellent sales perspectives for us, so that we can concentrate fully on the imminent start of production,” said JST’s managing director Jeroen Haberland. aleo is to introduce the prototype of the new module in September at the 22nd European Photovoltaic Solar Energy Conference in Milan . “We acquired an interest of 19% in Johanna Solar Technology early on [in 2006] in order to ensure our access to this thin film technology,” said Jakobus Smit, chairman of aleo’s management board. Formed in 2001,...

This came out in February of 2006 A few days ago an article appeared in the Cape Argus of South Africa, proclaiming a breakthrough in solar power technology. We could not find a great deal of correlating reports, so will simply relay what what we found from just a few sources. Apparently the technology resulted from over 10 years of research, led by Professor Vivian Alberts of the University of Johannesburg. He and his team seem to have developed a flexible, thin, metal alloy that is “photo-responsive”. This alloy is said to result in panels with are only 5 micron thick (compared to a human hair at 20 microns, and silicon photovoltaic cells at 350 microns.) \ Earlier reports (in 2004) indicated the alloy was copper-indium(gallium)-diselenide (CIGS), with another article inferring the panels would have a useful life of about 20 years, with the energy in fabricating them recovered within the first 1-2 years of operation. And that the materials used could all be later recycled to ma...