Lof Solar to Begin Producing Color Solar Cell in 2009
Taipei, March 31, 2008
Source: by Ken Liu / CENS
http://news.cens.com/cens/html/en/news/news_inner_22848.html
Photovoltaic startup Lof Solar Corp. of Taiwan said it will begin volume production of its color solar cells in the first quarter of 2008 after debuting the unique solar recently. For a long time, the cells have come in monochrome purple-blue color, largely choking their chances to go colorful applications. The company has unveiled red, yellow and grey cells and won patents, making it the industry`s first maker of color cells.
Lof Chairman and Chief Executive Officer H.L. Huang points out that although efforts to make the cells colorful have never stopped by big players, their methodologies have been proved badly harmful to photovoltaic conversion performance of the cells. Huang is a former professor at the National Tsing Hua University.
Lof`s technology affects barely 2% of the conversion, the best score of all color solar cells, according to the government-backed Industrial Technology Research Institute (ITRI). Huang said his company`s color technology will allow solar cells to perfectly match with outside of buildings.
The unique technology has inspired institutional investors` interest in putting money into the startup. Huang said his will make the cells on its own and already ordered production equipment from German supplier Centrotherm. Its first in-house production line for annual output of 30 megawatts of cells will start to run in first quarter next year. The company has depended on Mosel-Vitelic Inc. and Gintech Energy Corp. for contract manufacturing. The company shipped four megawatts of cells last year and has planned to increase the deliveries to 20 megawatts throughout this year.
Huang added that his company has secured sufficient polycrystalline silicon with the suppliers and planned to open a factory in the United States to put out 3,000 to 10,000 metric tons of the silicon a year. Huang said his company will boost output to 555 megawatts of cells in five years and, in the meantime, will branch out into production of thin-film solar cells.
The company plans to increase capitalization to NT$2.7 billion (US$90 million at US$1:NT$30) at the end of this year and go public on Taiwan stock exchange market in 2010. While developing color solar cells, the company is also improving conversion efficiency of the cells, projecting to upgrade the conversion ratio by over 20% in 2010.