Solar Cells Info

By Matt Nauman, MediaNews Staff
San Jose, CA, 7 Jan 2008
Source: InsideBayArea.com
http://www.insidebayarea.com/business/ci_7902104

Caterers unfurled red tablecloths. A drum kit sat in the corner waiting for the band to arrive.  It’s time for a party at Nanosolar in San Jose’s blossoming Edenvale Technology Park. And why not; the company has lots to celebrate.  After five years, more than $100 million, and the financial blessings of some of the biggest names in Silicon Valley (the founders of Google, eBay and others), Nanosolar is finally selling something.

The company said last month that it had just shipped its first solar panel and racked up its first sales. It developed an innovative technology, one that uses nanoparticles from a chemical compound, not silicon, to capture the sun’s rays. The company describes this as the world’s first printed thin-film solar cell, which is also the world’s lowest-cost solar panel.

On top of that, the company forecasts rapid growth. It leases 90,000 square feet of office space once used by Cisco Systems for its offices and production plant, and will soon take up the entire 200,000-square-foot building. Next year, it will open a second factory in Luckenwalde, Germany, south of Berlin. That’s also the destination of its first thin-film solar panels. They’ll be used to create a 1-megawatt solar farm that will generate power for the city’s utility district.

(Nanosolar’s still small, relatively speaking. San Jose’s SunPower said it manufactured more than 100 megawatts of solar panels this year, and has told analysts that will grow to 250 megawatts in 2008 and about 430 in 2009.)

Nanosolar targets the market for “free field” solar-generation facilities, Chief Executive Martin Roscheisen said, in which plants are built in open fields on the outskirts of a city. It’s a concept that’s popular in Europe and Asia, and less so in California, where the state emphasizes getting solar panels on 1 million roofs.

“You can do it very cost-effectively,” Roscheisen said. “You don’t have to deal with building codes and issues that you have with roof-top installations. They get more expensive. And you don’t have to crawl up on 5,000 different roofs.”

Talk to Roscheisen, 39, and you wonder how he was able to wait for this moment. He talks fast, walks fast and continuously taps his leg during an hourlong conversation.  It takes place in an open conference room at Nanosolar’s headquarters. The building is being used as a mix of lab, office and manufacturing space. With its exposed ceilings, natural light and uncluttered work spaces, it reflects a company with room to grow.

That impression continues onto the factory floor, where one line — named G4 to reflect its use of fourth-generation technology — is set up and another soon will be. Again, there’s plenty of room to grow.  “We’re going to fill up the entire facility,” Roscheisen said. “For a manufacturing company, when you have a good product, you’ll always be capacity constrained.”

At full production, Nanosolar will make enough solar cells to generate 430 megawatts of electricity — each megawatt can power about 750 houses — and says it’s selling everything it can build.  Nanosolar’s first one is a partnership with Beck Energy, a $20 billion German company thatconstructs small-scale solar plants. That’s an important deal because Germany has emerged as the world’s leading solar market, with nearly half the installations, Roscheisen said. Also, Beck works with some of the biggest names in solar, including First Solar of Phoenix as well as big German, French and Spanish companies.

Conrad Burke, chief executive officer of Innovalight, another solar startup in Silicon Valley, wouldn’t comment on the technology of his rival, but did offer some perspective on the nature of the process.

“It is not so straightforward to develop and bring to market a disruptive new solar cell technology,” he said. “A lot of new solar cell technologies being developed today in the valley require compressing decades of man-years into a couple of years and it takes a lot of capital, smart people and a few breaks of good luck from Mother Nature to get it right.”

The world’s solar industry took notice of Nanosolar’s news as well.  It’s a “milestone,” said Monique Hanis, spokeswoman for the Solar Energy Industries Association in Washington, one that “demonstrates the huge growth potential of solar energy in this country.”

Solar energy, a renewable source of power gaining popularity as concerns about global warming grow, needs to become more affordable, she said. Nanosolar helps do that. “It’s all about dollars per watt,” Roscheisen said.  Nanosolar now employs about 200 people, and forecasts it’ll add 100 more in 2008.

Silicon Valley has become a hot spot for the solar industry, with established players such as SunPower, whose stock has risen 247 percent this year; a multitude of venture-backed startups seeking to capitalize on new technologies; other companies working to create solar-thermal utility plants; and dozens of installation firms.