As the sun rises over Seville in southern Spain, its blinding light bounces on a field of 624 mirrors surrounded by sunflowers.  The moving mirrors reflect sunbeams onto a 115-meter-high white tower that uses the concentrated heat to boil water, making steam that spins an electric turbine 97 times a second. This is Europe’s first commercial solar-thermal-electricity plant, at the forefront of a growing movement for green power.

“Look! Look!” exclaims plant manager Valerio Fernandez as he watches a computer screen showing that output is hovering short of the maximum. On hot, clear days, the 37 million-euro plant ($55 million) can generate 11 megawatts, enough power for 5,500 homes. The plant fails to reach its goal at noon on this June day, meaning a handful of the homes will use power from fossil fuels. “Ugh, we didn’t reach it,” Fernandez, 39, says. “We almost did.”

“Close but not quite” is a phrase that could be applied to solar power in general. Soaring oil and gas prices, concerns about the security of foreign supplies, and a system of subsidies in Spain and Germany are making solar energy more competitive now than it’s ever been.

Solar Problem-Solver
Those conditions have spurred European companies such as Seville-based Abengoa SA, which built the plant where Fernandez works, in the race to harness the sun’s rays for energy. Solar power, properly harnessed, could solve the world’s energy problems.

“In six hours, the yearly energy consumption of humanity is delivered as solar energy to deserts,” says German particle physicist Gerhard Knies. He’s devised an audacious plan to erect fields of mirrors in the Sahara Desert and connect North African countries to Europe’s power grid across the Mediterranean Sea.

“It’s a wonderful project,” says Jeffrey Sachs, director of the Earth Institute at Columbia University. “They’re not yet at the level of commercial technology,” he says, “but I am confident that they could get there.” Sachs says public financing will be a key to success.

Public awareness that being green is good — and political backing for subsidies — is also boosting solar projects. Al Gore’s documentary “An Inconvenient Truth,” which won two Oscars in 2007, increased acceptance among governments and ordinary citizens that burning fossil fuels is causing global warming.

Europe’s Green Goal
The European Union last year set a target of generating 20 percent of its energy from renewable sources by 2020, up from 9.2 percent in 2006.  Russia’s invasion of Georgia in August also drove home the risk of relying too much on one foreign supplier for fuel. Russia supplies more than 40 percent of Europe’s gas imports and a third of its imported oil, according to the European Commission, the EU’s executive arm.

“Given Russia’s intervention in Georgia, it’s crucial for Europe to diversify the technological and geographical sources of its energy,” says Michael Ware, a managing director at Good Energies Inc., which manages 4 billion euros of renewable energy investments for the billionaire Dutch Brenninkmeijer family.

In September, Good Energies invested an undisclosed amount in SolarReserve Inc., a Santa Monica, California-based solar tower company.

Gore and French President Nicolas Sarkozy are interested in the trans-Mediterranean solar power plan. Knies says Gore invited him to New York in April for a meeting.

“He was sucking information, basically,” Knies says. Kalee Kreider, Gore’s spokeswoman, confirms that Gore’s team knows Knies’s work.

Solar Meeting
Knies, an energetic 71-year-old who previously was a researcher at the Hamburg-based particle physics center Deutsches Elektronen- Synchrotron, organized a conference in April attended by 160 people including investors, companies such as Abengoa and politicians.  Knies, the son of a pastor, told them solar power is free, clean and almost inexhaustible. Sunlight can be gathered on empty deserts and used to power desalination plants, which can bring drinking water and irrigation to barren lands.

“If we manage to tap into the solar energy of the desert, then we have technology which could solve our problems,” Knies says. Putting mirrors on just 0.2 percent of the Sahara — an area 80 miles by 80 miles — could generate all of the EU’s electricity, he says.

Mediterranean Plan
France, which generated 77 percent of its electricity in nuclear plants last year, wants to create a Mediterranean Solar Plan as part of a new union of European and Mediterranean states Sarkozy founded earlier this year. The goal of the union is to boost trade, security and employment in North Africa, a big source of illegal immigration into Europe.  “We will build factories to bring jobs to North Africa,” says Antoine-Tristan Mocilnikar, a Sarkozy adviser who attended Knies’s conference in Hanover, Germany.

Knies’s outlook may be too . . . sunny. Solar power needs to compete with other forms of energy, ranging from wind to nuclear. Even by 2016, the cost of building a solar-thermal plant will make its power cost 14.6 cents per kilowatt-hour, more than twice as much as oil, gas and coal, says Christopher Namovicz, an analyst at the U.S. Energy Information Administration in Washington.  “The limit to solar-thermal power is its cost,” he says. “There are issues with system-reliability — it doesn’t work at night or on cloudy days — but they boil down to cost problems, too.”

Subsidies Needed
There is one way to help solar energy catch on. “It requires subsidies,” Namovicz says. Whether they will be forthcoming is uncertain, he adds: “It’s hard to forecast the will of lawmakers.”

Knies and his countrymen know that. Almost a decade of guaranteed prices set by the government has made Germany the world leader in solar power and the site of 40 percent of the world’s installed solar panels, according to New Energy Finance Ltd., a London- based research company.

Then this year, Chancellor Angela Merkel’s government scaled back consumer-funded solar subsidies, cutting the price for power from solar plants larger than 1 megawatt by 25 percent to 33 cents per kilowatt-hour. That puts pressure on German solar companies to seek export markets in sunny climates from North Africa to the U.S. and China.

Nuclear power, too, is a major rival to solar power — even in sun-rich North Africa and the Middle East. Sarkozy is signing nuclear power agreements with countries from the United Arab Emirates to Algeria, even as he touts a solar plan. Algeria has said it intends to build a nuclear plant within 10 years.

Bankers Interested
Still, solar energy is attracting the attention of some European bankers who want to finance projects. While the sun’s energy itself is free, building plants to use it is not. Nikolai Ulrich, head of the European renewable energy unit at Germany’s HSH Nordbank AG, says it will cost about 400 billion euros to build capacity for 700 terawatt-hours — about 20 percent of Europe’s annual consumption — of imported North African solar electricity.

That’s about what Europe spends every year on imported oil and gas at current prices.  Bankers need guarantees to ensure against the risks of lending in North Africa, a region fraught with instability where only one country — Tunisia — has an investment-grade credit rating from Standard & Poor’s for foreign-currency borrowing.  “The host country is a key part in the equation,” Ulrich says. “The benefits to both sides must be transparent.”

Knies’s trans-Mediterranean plan can work without any government funding, says Ziad Tassabehji, a director of Masdar, the renewable energy unit of oil-rich Abu Dhabi. “The project can only be viable if European governments are not required to subsidize it,” he says. “What’s needed is the political will and the legislative framework to make the plan work.”

The process has started, says European Commission spokesman Ferran Tarradellas Espuny. In January, the Commission proposed allowing imported renewable energy to count toward the 2020 goal for cutting fossil fuels. “The potential for North African solar electricity is huge,” he says.

Africa Wants Water
North African governments should favor the construction of solar thermal projects because they need power to run plants to desalinate seawater for drinking and irrigation in the parched lands, says Samer Zureikat, a Jordanian investor who started MENA Cleantech GmbH.  Zureikat’s Frankfurt-based company plans to use European and U.S. technology to build plants in North Africa and the Middle East. He has yet to start on a project.  “It’s not about what Europe needs,” Zureikat says. “It’s what the Middle East and North Africa need, and that’s water.”

North Africans aren’t swayed by arguments that solar power is better for the environment, says Youssef Arfaoui, an energy analyst at the African Development Bank in Tunis. “The consumer is too poor,” he says.  The obstacles in Africa also range from nonexistent roads to a lack of energy investment laws to flying grains of sand. “In the Sahara, you are fighting the problem of dust,” Arfaoui says.

Despite the obstacles, solar companies have announced plans to build 8.9 gigawatts of solar-thermal power worldwide, at a cost of $35 billion, according to New Energy Finance.

Saudi Sun
“We’re talking to a lot of people about projects throughout the Middle East and North Africa,” says David Mills, chairman of Palo Alto, California-based solar-thermal company Ausra Inc., who attended Knies’s conference.  Ausra, a startup backed by a $40 million investment from venture capitalists Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers and Vinod Khosla, agreed in November 2007 to build a 177-megawatt plant for San Francisco-based utility Pacific Gas & Electric.

In the Middle East, Saudi Arabia, Abu Dhabi, Israel and the Palestinian Authority have all jumped on the solar bandwagon. “We will pursue what we believe is the most plentiful and cleanest form of alternative energy and that is solar,” Saudi Oil Minister Ali al-Naimi said in April.

Yoel Gilon, an Israel-based executive at BrightSource Energy Inc.’s Luz II Ltd. unit, says a trans-Mediterranean power network could promote peaceful trade.

‘Use It or Lose It’
Solar power generates positive dependencies between customers and suppliers because once a solar grid is built, the power it captures has to be sent over the grid or not at all, he says.  “You use it or you lose it,” Gilon says. “It’s not like barrels of oil underground.”

If solar power takes off, it could eliminate the need for new countries to try to join the nuclear power club, says Cedric Philibert, an analyst at the International Energy Agency in Paris.  “There should be no debate when you talk about Iran or Libya or countries that have a lot of sun,” he says.

Spain’s Abengoa is a pioneer in the region. Last year, the company won contracts to build the first mirror-powered plants in Algeria and Morocco. Both solar installations will be combined with gas plants, so they can work at night or with cloudy weather.

Abengoa, founded as an engineering company in 1941, expanded into renewable energy in the 1990s and today is Europe’s largest producer of ethanol. The company has a market value of 1.4 billion euros and trades on the Madrid Stock Exchange.

Spanish Subsidies
Spain became a leader in solar-thermal technology in 2004, when the government decided to support solar-generated electricity by forcing utilities to buy the power at a fixed price, currently about 27 cents per kilowatt-hour. The average European household paid 14.5 euro cents per kilowatt-hour in 2007, according to the European Commission.  The Spanish subsidy, funded by consumers, enabled builders to secure project loans, says the IEA’s Philibert. “The tariff allows the plants to be bankable and to come to life,” he says.

So far, investors plan to build 3.5 gigawatts of solar-thermal power in Spain, according to New Energy Finance.  Two hundred miles (320 kilometers) east of Seville, on a 1,100-meter-high (3,600-foot-high) plateau in the snowcapped Sierra Nevada mountains, sit fields of mirrors covering 6-meter-high parabolic troughs. They focus light onto glass pipes filled with oil, which then flows to a central power plant to make steam to turn a turbine.

Solar Cells
The 50-megawatt solar-thermal plant, built by Erlangen, Germany-based Solar Millennium AG and Madrid-based Grupo Cobra, cost 300 million euros. When it opens this year, the Sierra Nevada installation will sell electricity to Endesa SA, Spain’s second- largest power company.

Sun-tracking mirrors may face competition from solar cells, which are usually deployed on a small scale. Large solar-cell plants are too expensive to build, according to New Energy Finance analyst Jenny Chase. That may change as technology improves and the cost of silicon falls. Chase expects the cost of silicon to slump in 2009 as new plants in China start production.

Fewer Parts
Solar cells have the advantage of containing fewer mechanical parts, such as turbines and generators. “You directly get electricity,” says Bernd Schwartz, a manager in the solar unit of Osaka-based Sharp Corp., Japan’s biggest maker of solar batteries. “This makes it so easy to handle.”

The electricity made at solar-thermal plants is easier to store, its proponents say. In Solar Millennium’s Spanish mountain plant, the sunlight can be stored as heat in giant tanks of molten salt and then used to generate electricity at night or when there are clouds.

The technology to span the Mediterranean with a transmission cable already exists. ABB Ltd., the world’s largest builder of electricity networks, has laid a 580-kilometer underwater cable from Norway to the Netherlands.  At Knies’s conference in April, ABB manager Gunnar Asplund showed a world map with arrows linking deserts to densely populated places such as Europe. “What we like about these arrows is that they are quite long,” Asplund says.

Archimedes
Experiments with solar mirrors date back more than 2,000 years to the Greek mathematician and inventor Archimedes, who reputedly reflected the sun’s rays to set fire to enemy ships.  In modern times, the first experiments with solar-thermal power took place around 1860. French mathematician Auguste Mouchout grew fearful of his country’s dependence on foreign coal and began working on a solar motor.

In 1903, Aubrey Eneas’s Solar Motor Co. opened in Los Angeles, and in 1912, American Frank Shuman’s Sun Power Co. built a solar-powered water pump near Cairo.  “The human race must finally utilize direct sun power or revert to barbarism,” Shuman wrote in 1914, according to The Power of Light, a history of solar power by Frank T. Kryza (McGraw- Hill, 2003).

That same year, the human race resorted to barbarism with the outbreak of World War I. From then on, fossil fuels reigned as new discoveries of oil and gas reserves kept prices cheap and supply plentiful.

Interest Revives
Interest in solar power revived in the 1970s, when the cost of oil soared as Arab producers halted supply, Good Energies’ Ware says. In 1973, Ware worked on the U.S. government’s Project Independence, a push to be self-sufficient in energy. The project wasn’t in vain, Ware says.  “Out of the project came the federal spending for development of wind, solar-thermal and photovoltaic technologies,” he says.

The first solar-thermal plants were built in California in the 1980s. Political support for solar-thermal plants in the U.S. evaporated — along with their competitiveness — when oil prices halved between October 1990 and February 1991 to $17 a barrel. Luz International Ltd., the company that built the first U.S. solar fields, went bankrupt in 1991.

`A Dark Night’
“Concentrating solar power went into a dark night, which lasted for about 15 years,” says Michael Geyer, international director of Abengoa.  “There was no countercyclical thinking that, while energy costs were low, new technologies for the future had to be prepared.”

Juno Beach, Florida-based FPL Group Inc. still runs seven of the original solar fields, with combined capacity of 310 megawatts, enough to power about 230,000 Southern California homes.  Geyer, who graduated from the University of Tubingen in Germany, says he became interested in solar power in 1977 while studying for a year at the University of Oregon in Eugene.

His professor experimented with the solar heating of water. The following year, he visited the solar towers at the Sandia National Laboratories in Albuquerque, New Mexico. “I really got the kick on this trip,” he says.

In 1985, Geyer was working on solar research for the German space agency, which sent him to work at the Plataforma Solar de Almeria, a solar research center in southern Spain founded by the IEA.

Chernobyl’s Fallout
Then came the event that prevented Europe’s solar power industry from tumbling into complete oblivion.  On April 26, 1986, reactor No. 4 at the Chernobyl nuclear plant in Ukraine exploded, sending a plume of radioactivity into the atmosphere. Winds carried the fallout across Europe to Germany.

“It had been determined that all funding for solar research would run out — until Chernobyl,” says Geyer, who worked for the space agency until 2001. “That saved the German budget for solar research.”

`Alternatives’
Chernobyl also galvanized Knies. “The accident showed that nuclear power has too many risks,” says the physicist. “Are we so stupid not to think of better alternatives?”  Knies says he came up with the idea of a trans-Mediterranean grid in 1995. When he retired from Deutsches Elektronen- Synchrotron in 2002, he resolved to promote his idea worldwide.

In 2003, he teamed up with the Club of Rome, a Winterthur, Switzerland-based research group best known for a 1972 report titled “The Limits to Growth.”  The publication, which mapped out how finite natural resources and a growing population would restrict the global economy, sold 12 million copies in 30 languages.

Europe’s continued stake in nuclear power makes it much harder for the EU to agree on a detailed solar plan. In July, 25 European lawmakers wrote to France’s Sarkozy to urge him to build a trans- Mediterranean electricity link as an alternative to nuclear power.

“The major hurdle to harness this potential is not technical know-how but political will,” wrote Rebecca Harms, a German Green Party member.

`Consumers to Pay Double’
Abengoa’s Geyer agrees. “If you have the right regulatory instruments you can mobilize private investment, private industrial development,” he says.  Consumers, though, will have to help shoulder the burden. “The private electricity consumer may have to pay twice as much as he pays today,” he says.

Abengoa’s Fernandez says he’s working on how to install a more advanced boiler capable of heating solar steam to 550 degrees Celsius (1,022 degrees Fahrenheit), compared with 250 degrees now. That would increase productivity and cut costs, he says.  Fernandez, who designed software for solar power towers for his Ph.D. thesis in industrial engineering at the University of Seville, says he first got the solar bug as a teenager after visiting the Almeria research center where Geyer worked.

It was a summer in the mid-1980s when Fernandez’s parents took him to see the towers and mirrors. “The interest was born there,” Fernandez says.

Inspiration
In the Seville plant’s control room, he points to a weather map displayed on a flat-screen television. White clouds swirl over the blue Atlantic Ocean and the green lands of northern Europe. An orange, cloudless expanse marks the Sahara Desert in North Africa.  “We receive gas by pipes from Algeria to Spain and Italy,” he says. “It’s easier to transport electricity.”

For all its potential, though, solar power will only be one part of Europe’s future energy supply, says Valeriano Ruiz Hernandez, a professor of thermodynamics at the University of Seville.  Ruiz Hernandez, a family friend of Fernandez, whom he taught at university, is skeptical of the plan to import solar power from North Africa.

`No Miracles’
“Don’t think it’s a miracle,” he says of the trans- Mediterranean solar network, as he sips coffee in a bar behind Seville’s cathedral. “There are no miracles in technology.”  Ruiz Hernandez, 65, says people must understand that future energy depends on a combination of wind, sun, tides, dams, biomass and other fuels — as well as on more efficient energy consumption.

The professor opposes grand plans based on a single source, especially if it’s nuclear. He taps the side of his head with his left forefinger. “The problem is here, for the politicians, for the consumers, for the journalists.”

Out in the sunflower fields, Fernandez shades his eyes as he watches Abengoa workers cleaning mirrors. Abengoa is constructing sun-tracking mirrors on about 1,000 hectares (2,500 acres). When it’s finished in 2013, the plant will be capable of generating 300 megawatts.  That would be all that’s needed to power Seville — as long as the sun is shining.

After in mid-July announcing a European record of 37.6% for solar cell efficiency, the Fraunhofer Institute for Solar Energy Systems (ISE) of Freiburg, Germany has achieved a new record of 39.7% (closer to the world record of 40.8% set in August by the US Department of Energy’s National Renewable Energy Laboratory).  The new cell uses the same metamorphic (lattice mismatched) triple-junction structures consisting of more than 30 layers (including Ga0.35In0.65P, Ga0.83In0.17As and Ge) grown on a germanium substrate by metal-organic chemical vapor deposition (MOCVD) using a reactor from Aixtron of Aachen, Germany. However, the higher efficiency has been achieved by improving the contact structures of the solar cells through using a front-side network of thin metal wires that transport large currents but with low resistance, according to Frank Dimroth, head of the III-V – Epitaxy and Solar Cells Group.

For concentrator photovoltaic (CPV) systems, optimal efficiency of multi-junction solar cells must often be achieved at a concentration factor of 300-600 suns. At different concentration factors, the metallization on the front side of the cell makes a major difference. In the front grid, current is conducted through a network of thin wires (see figure 1) from the middle of the solar cell to the edge, where it is then picked up by a 50µm gold wire. Under concentrated sunlight in particular, the structure of this metal network is critical. On the one hand, the metal wires must be big enough to transport, with low resistance, the large currents that are generated under concentrated sunlight. On the other hand, the wires must be as small as possible, since sunlight cannot penetrate through the metal and thus the cell area covered by the metal cannot be used for converting sunlight to electricity.

For the past two years, sponsored by the European Union research project Fullspectrum (SES6-CT-2003-502620), Fraunhofer ISE has been working on a program for the theoretical calculation of the optimal contact structures. Based on this work, the new cells are especially suited to inhomogeneous radiation, as occurs for concentration factors of 300-600 suns. The solar cells have been installed in concentrator modules of FLATCON type, both at Fraunhofer ISE and at spin-off firm Concentrix Solar GmbH, among others.

“We are very pleased to have advanced a further decisive step in such a short amount of time,” says Dr Andreas Bett, department head at Fraunhofer ISE. Higher conversion efficiencies will help the new technology to become market competitive and to further cut the costs of solar electricity generation in the future, he adds.

Nearly four years since promoters first descended on India to hawk multi-billion dollar wafer fabs for semiconductor chips and for nearly as long since local booster associations (composed mostly of software/design types with rather thin credentials in expertise e,g. physics or materials science, critical to semiconductors) jumped on the bandwagon to advocate wafer fabs, not a single new fab has come up anywhere in India!

Even the Government Ministries responsible for facilitating the belated start of semiconductor manufacturing in India seem to have focused solely on the financial aspects (e.g., subsidies), and at the same time, underestimated the overwhelming importance of securing scarce technical knowhow that still dominates the viability of this most high tech of industries. The fact that nanoscale devices are already in production at the latest wafer fabs seems to have escaped them as well.

Instead of a parallel underwriting of technology research at various Indian laboratories and institutes to accelerate the implementation of basic silicon semiconductor technology into fabs, they have decided to dabble in fashionable longer term technologies like compound semiconductors and nanotechnology with no compulsion to produce any tangible results in the near term.

Just like computer chips, solar photovoltaics too use semiconductors as the active material to convert the sun’s rays into electricity. The complexity of processing these materials and the need to squeeze the maximum performance out of the photovoltaic devices thus made should not be underestimated. In order to stay viable, the private industries embarking on manufacture of solar PV in India will have to export their products for some time to come. Relying on technology and tools bought off-the-shelf will not be a guarantee to remain competitive in the international market.

Compared to India, China has higher labor productivity and they are already far ahead in solar PV production. And then, there is the fact that as yet electricity generated by solar PV has NOT attained grid parity (in fact, it is thrice as expensive) and to make them self sustaining (i.e., without having to depend on government subsidies ) the cost of solar panels must be reduced by a factor of 3.

There is an intense effort worldwide to develop technologies to do just that. Thus, the technology for solar panels is in a state of flux and many competing technologies are being developed in parallel.

Need for realistic policies
To keep up with this dynamic scenario continuous improvement fueled by domestic R&D capability will be critical. This can be ensured only if a parallel national research and training program on solar and alternative energies is launched without further delay at competent scientific laboratories and technical institutes of India. To avoid repeating the wafer fab fiasco for solar PV too, government policies to promote it must be realistic and should be formulated not only by the technical bureaucrats entrenched in Delhi ministries or subsidized government laboratories but also include experts from the semiconductor manufacturing industry.

The predominant technology for building solar photovoltaic cells and modules today uses crystalline silicon wafers made from polysilicon. The performance of the cells depend on the quality of the silicon used e,g. the degree of chemical purity, even how perfectly the atoms are arranged in a wafer. The most perfect silicon, called single crystal semiconductor grade silicon can convert over 22 percent of the sunlight falling on it into electricity. But more common are cells made from polycrystalline silicon wafers that have some imperfections due to the cheaper manufacturing process used and yield conversion efficiencies between 15-18 percent.

To make polysilicon, first metallurgical grade silicon is gasified, then purified and next deposited as chunks of solid polysilicon. The polysilicon chunks are next melted in an ultra pure environment and cast into ingots ( either as a perfect but expensive single crystal or a cheaper and imperfect poly crystal ), then sawn into wafers and polished. These wafers are next processed using steps common in wafer fabs for chips to make photo voltaic cells. The processed cells are tested and assembled into modules.

Approximately 10 gms of silicon is needed to build modules capable of generating a watt of electricity under the strongest sun. Polysilicon is expensive and the modules thus built cost up to $ 4.50 per watt of power generated. At present, there is a polysilicon shortage in the world which has raised their price from $ 40 per kg to $ 100 per kg even for long term contracts. A new polysilicon plant of annual capacity of 2,000 T py (good for modules that will generate 200 MW of power) would cost $200-300 million and take two to three years to build and stabilize production.

To reach grid parity, modules should cost below $2.00 per watt, a range of new technologies are under development to meet this goal. Some minimize the use of silicon (e.g., by making cells out of thin film amorphous silicon using only about a hundredth as much as a wafer), some use no silicon at all (e.g., make cells from thin films of metallic alloys of Cadmium and Tellurium or CdTe, Copper-Indium-Gallium Selenide or CIGS, organic dyes, etc.).

Attaining grid parity
In addition to consuming a lot of expensive silicon the traditional wafer route is also labor intensive as it requires quite a bit of wiring and mechanical assembly (which is why most modules by this route are now assembled in China and some even in Bangalore). So, another thrust in reducing the cost of solar modules is to design them to require minimal assembly, the same idea that led to the spectacular success of integrated circuits. To this end continuous roll to roll processes have been developed and put into production, the leading example of which today is the technology developed and used by United Solar (Michigan, USA) to deposit thin films of silicon and silicon-germanium alloys on sheets of stainless steel.

What would come as a surprise to most Indians today is that this technology had its genesis in Calcutta and United Solar of USA is led by Dr. Subhendu Guha with a PhD from Calcutta University! Compared to the traditional thick silicon wafer solar cells, thin film solar cells consume much less precious semiconductor material and on a per watt basis cost only 60-70 percent as much.

At present, First Solar Corp. of Phoenix AZ, USA, the world’s largest thin film solar cell company, uses its proprietary cadmium telluride thin film technology to deposit solar cells on glass sheets and claims the lowest cost in the world ( $ 1.25 per watt ). They will soon ramp their production from 300 MW py to 1 GW py. However, be it silicon or non-silicon ( like Cd Te or CIGS ), in the absolute efficiency scale thin film cells in production are somewhat deficient as due to various unavoidable imperfections in crystal structure, their solar conversion efficiency, seldom exceeds 10 percent, less than half that of the best silicon wafer solar modules.

The production processes are also more sophisticated and thus cost more (turnkey plants made by Applied Materials for thin film silicon cells on glass sheets may cost over 3 million USD per MW py capacity). APSTL, the authors company in Scottsdale, AZ, is developing silicon PV cells that will consume only a fraction as much polysilicon as the traditional wafers yet have conversion efficiencies well above that of thin film cells.

The highest solar conversion efficiency today is produced by cells made of multi-junction compound semiconductors. Spectrolab, located north of LA, makes cells that show efficiency of up to 40 percent (nearly double that of the best silicon wafer cells). However, due to the slow and exact process used to grow these semiconductors they are extremely expensive ($2/sq. mm of die ) and most frequently can be used only for defense and satellite applications. Mars lander robots, including the one that recently confirmed water in Mars, use these multi-junction solar cells to generate enough electricity to operate a power shovel to dig into the hard Martian soil or run a whole chemistry lab on board!

To make these very expensive multijunction solar cells affordable for commercial applications they need to be integrated with concentrator optics (mirrors with cassegrain optics) with attendant cooling systems as well as sun-tracking devices.

Maintaining competitiveness in Indian solar/PV
The above thumbnail sketch should be enough to convince both government policymakers and entrepreneurs that solar PV is an industry deeply rooted in physics and hardcore sciences and it is no place for those with software/design background to dabble in and mess up. The long term goal should be to identify strategies to maintain competitiveness in the nascent solar PV industry in India even if to get itself off the ground it first uses standard off the shelf tools and technologies that are available to competitors, e.g., China etc. too.

This requires a policy of continuous improvement in cost and/or performance via technology, to sustain, which requires a capable domestic R&D and hardware base. To this end the government ministries must formulate policies that are well grounded in the technical and business realities of the semiconductor industry worldwide as well as adopt a systems approach. That is, it is not just offering financial incentives to set up semiconductor plants, but simultaneously, finance the development of the missing technical infrastructure for semiconductors, viz training of manpower in physics, materials sciences and construction of semiconductor production and testing equipment.

Research based training/education programs on solar photovoltaics and alternative energy in general should be launched at select Indian universities. Lastly, a new Semiconductor Hardware Association of India, composed primarily of physicists and hardware engineers (rather than the unqualified software/design type pretenders who have contributed to the wafer fab fiasco), should be created at the earliest so as to co-ordinate the development of the semiconductor hardware manufacturing industry in India with minimum avoidable delays.

The author is the Chief Technical Officer of APSTL llc, of Scottsdale, AZ, USA, a company that specializes in developing key semiconductor technologies and licensing them worldwide.

While more new thin-film solar cell players from Asia are entering into polysilicon volume production in 2009, many of them have noted that their capacity has already been fully booked. However, their claimed success does hide potential risks as compared to the achievements made by leading players. Given that leading player First Solar has already introduced its cadmium telluride (CdTe) thin-film solar modules into volume production, smaller-scale players have looked into the segment more closely.

US-based First Solar has most of its thin-film solar modules fabricated based on CdTe. The company plans to see its capacity hit 1GWp in 2009. Of the top-ten solar cell makers (in terms of capacity) worldwide in 2007, First Solar is the only one that produces solar cells on thin-film materials.

Industry players highlighted First Solar is one of the thin-film solar cell makers that has been able to have production follow schedule, implying that its future influence should not be underestimated. They remarked that many thin-film solar module makers are trying to replicate First Solar’s successful business model.

The thin-film solar cell market is expected to be a battle between amorphous silicon (a-Si) and CdTe in 2009, the industry players said. Since First Solar currently has a power conversion rate from its CdTe-based thin-film solar modules averaging at 10.7% with a higher rate expected in 2009, the company is a challenge but also an inspiration for its rivals. They estimated that most thin-film solar cell makers still have power conversion rates averaging at 5-7%.

A review of thin-film solar cell makers in Taiwan and China shows that China-based players such as Suntech Power and LDK Solar have capacity plans on much a larger scale than Taiwan players. Some of these companies have already moved production to volume with shipments already started.

Thin-film solar cell segments and related share of total solar cell market, 2008-21015 (%)
Materials  -   2008  -  2015
a-Si  -   8.8   -   7.1
CdTe  -   2.5   -   8.1
CIGS  -   2.8   -  13.2
Other -   0.3   -   2.1
Total  - 14.4   -  30.5

Taiwan’s Bureau of Energy under the Ministry of Economic Affairs (MOEA) is planning to invite Chinese government officials responsible for making renewable energy policies to attend a solar energy symposium tentatively scheduled for early 2009 in Taiwan, in an attempt to foster cooperation with the China government to promote the development of Taiwan’s solar energy industry including Taiwan-based solar energy makers’ investment in production in China, according to industry sources.

The Bureau of Energy confirmed the plan and indicated that it is in line with the government’s two flagship projects to promote solar energy in Taiwan. The Taiwan government hopes the China government can help through generating demand for solar energy in China which will in turn benefit Taiwan-based makers, the industry sources pointed out.

Taiwan-based solar energy makers’ investments in China
Motech Industries : Is establishing a solar cell factory with annual capacity of 65MWp in Kunshan, eastern China
Gintech Energy:  Plans to set up solar cell production lines in China in 2009
Sino-American Silicon Products:  Plans to set up a factory to grow solar silicon wafers in China in 2009 with a minimum annual capacity of 500MWp equivalent
Green Energy Technology:  Plans to begin construction of a solar silicon wafer factory in the Inner Mongolian region of China around the end of 2008
Wafer Works:  Its subsidiary Solargiga Energy has begun production of mono-crystalline silicon ingots and wafers in China
PanJit International (LED maker):  Its subsidiary Jiangsu Aide Solar Energy Technology is already in operation in eastern China

Manufacturing capacity for thin-film and organic photovoltaics is expected to grow from approximately 2 GWp (Gigawatts at peak sunlight) this year to 29 GWp by 2015 according to a new report from NanoMarkets, an industry analyst firm. While First Solar will be hard to pass in the cadmium telluride (CdTe) sector, the race for dominance in the CIGS and OPV sectors has just begun. By 2015 these two sectors combined will account for 19% and 10% of aggregate capacity. At the same time, the value of manufacturing equipment purchased by thin-film PV (TFPV) and organic PV (OPV) firms will grow from US$450 million in 2008 to US$4.8 billion in 2015.

Annual manufacturing equipment purchases by TFPV/OPV firms will reach over US$1 billion in 2009, more than double this year. NanoMarkets projects that the market for TFPV/OPV equipment will flatten in 2010 as solar cell makers fully utilize the capacity they have rapidly put in place since 2007 but resume growth and reach US$4.8 billion in 2015.

Printing promises to reduce manufacturing costs, although it also faces challenges when it comes to producing the highest efficiency cells. Nonetheless, the market for printing equipment used in the manufacture of TFPV cells will grow from around US$40 million in 2008 to over US$750 million in 2015.

Solargiga Energy, a China subsidiary of Taiwan-based silicon wafer maker Wafer Works, has signed with Hoku Materials, a Hawaii-based supplier of polycrystalline silicon material, to extend its production of solar cells from monocrystalline models to polycrystalline ones, according to the Chinese-language newspaper Commercial Times (CT).

Solargiga will begin establishment of its polycrystalline silicon solar cell production lines with a total capacity of 150MWp (megawatts-peak) around the end of 2008 and kick off production in 2009, CT pointed out. In the meantime, Solargiga has been expanding its capacity of growing monocrystalline silicon to have 200 growing furnaces by the end of 2008 and add 200 ones in 2009 to a total of 400, the paper indicated.

Earlier this month, Hoku also announced the signing of a definitive contract for Hoku’s sale and delivery of polysilicon to Solargiga – through its wholly owned subsidiary Wealthy Rise International – over a ten-year period beginning in early 2010. According to the contract, up to approximately US$455 million may be payable to Hoku during the ten-year period, subject to product deliveries and other conditions.

The contract provides for the delivery of predetermined volumes of polysilicon each year, with the first shipment in the first quarter of 2010 and the remainder over a ten-year period at set prices that will decline throughout the term of the agreement.

Solartech Energy, a Taiwan-based producer of crystalline silicon solar cells, is expanding its production capacity through the construction of a new factory in northern Taiwan. Total annual capacity is to increase from the current 60MWp at its existing factory located elsewhere in northern Taiwan to 1,200MWp in 2013, according to company chairman KS Liu.  Solartech is setting up the new factory at a 36,360 square meter site, Liu indicated. Solartech will extend its production from only crystalline silicon solar cells to include high-concentration solar cells produced at the new factory, Liu said.

Solartech’s new factory will also house the production lines of its CIGS (copper-indium-gallium-selenide) thin-film solar cell subsidiary, Sunshine PV, with the first phase to be completed in 2011, and the second phase in 2013, Liu pointed out. Solartech has paid-in capital of NT$950 million (US$29.7 million) currently and expects to list on the Taiwan Stock Exchange (TSE) in the fourth quarter of 2008.

Sunshine will adopt CIGS technology provided by Germany-based Centrotherm Photovoltaic AG and plans to start trial production in the first quarter of 2009, with volume production to start in the following quarter, the company noted. The energy conversion rate for CIGS solar cells is expected to rise from 8% initially to 10% within several months, and further to 12% 18 months after, Sunshine pointed out.

Production capacity schedule at new factory
Solartech/Crystalline silicon solar cells (MWp) /High-concentration solar cells (MWp)
Phase 1 (to be finished in 2011) /  480  / 90   /90
Phase 2 (to begin in 2010 and be finished in 2013) / 480 / 90 / 90

Sunshine /CIGS thin-film solar cells (MWp)
Phase 1 (to be finished in 2011) / 90
Phase 2 (to begin in 2010 and be finished in 2013) / 90

Neo Solar Power (NSP, 3576 TT), a leading manufacturer of high quality solar cells, and Centrotherm Photovoltaics AG (Centrotherm), a global dominant solar equipment provider, entered into a Memorandum of Understanding on research and development collaboration to significantly improve solar cell efficiency targeting at over 20% for mass production. This collaboration project, 20+ solar cell project, aims to develop through production process improvement and eventually a re-engineering on device structure of conventional solar cells. The 20+ solar cell project will emphasize on improvement of conventional solar cell through better spectral response and effective light trapping; and innovative device structure design to substantially raise cell efficiency from current level. Through efficiency advancement, both partners expect to benefit from value created on manufacturing cost reduction and gross profit upturn in solar cell production.

Through research of better spectral response, cell efficiency will be increased by more blue light absorption. Effort on effective light trapping is to obtain higher photocurrent. Next stage research focus will be aimed on new device structure. Via device re-engineering, both partners expect to further achieve conversion efficiency soar to over 20% for mono-crystalline and 18.5% for multi-crystalline, The project effort is geared toward high efficiency and low cost solar cells in mass production stage that is expected to accelerate reaching grid parity.

“NSP is glad to partner with Centrotherm Photovoltaics on research collaboration for 20+ solar cell project to enhance efficiency performance and achieve cost saving on solar cell manufacture. Both partners have proven extensive research capacity, process improvement know-how, and process engineering structure for solar cell production. Through joint effort of Centrotherm Photovoltaics and NSP, we are confident to resolve major breakthrough on process improvement and device re-engineering to achieve cell cost reduction and drive solar energy to become a competitive energy source compared to grid,” said Dr. Quincy Lin, Chairman of NSP.

About Neo Solar Power Corporation
Founded in 2005, NSP specializes in manufacturing of high quality solar cells. Based in Hsinchu Taiwan, NSP currently has Fab 1 in full production at with 90MW capacity and expects its new Fab 2 at Hsinchu Science Park to launch production in the third quarter of 2008 with an ultimate capacity of 600 MW. Seasoned  through a long history in the semiconductor and solar industry, NSP produces cells with high efficiency and minimum ower loss. Leveraging core competence on quality, technology and technical services, NSP aims to become a global leader in the photovoltaic industry and to make solar energy a competitive energy source. For more information on NSP, please visit http://www.neosolarpower.com

Neo Solar Power, a leading manufacturer of high quality solar cells, announced today it sealed a 7-year long-term wafer supply contract with REC ScanWafer AS, the world’s largest manufacturer of multicrystalline silicon wafers. Under the contract, REC will provide NSP solar wafers worth of US$442 million (NT$13 billion) for the period from January 1, 2009 to December 31, 2015. Adding REC to its well diversified wafer supplier base, NSP expects to further lower supply concentration risk.

NSP has strived to optimize wafer sourcing mix to not only achieve most favorable terms on sourcing costs, wafer quality, and on schedule deliveries but also avoid procurement concentration risk. Concluding wafer supply contract with REC is expected to extend existing cooperation relations and further solidify wafer supply security to supports growth of NSP for the coming years. REC is well recognized for its wafer quality and reliable deliveries and has always been the top wafer supplier to global solar cell manufacturers. Resolving this contract indicates a major milestone for NSP on sourcing negotiation and effectively improves wafer cost mix to achieve financially rewarding terms.

While improving wafer sourcing availability, NSP also advance order flows and has signed several long term sales contracts, including the first 5-year solar cell contract with global leading module makers in Taiwan. Benefitted from the long term contract terms, where volume increases quarter by quarter while price decreases quarter by quarter, NSP expects a multiple growth on financial performance in 2H08 compared to that in 1H08. Supported by strong future orders advancement and an encouraging solar industry growth momentum, NSP is confident to further enhance financial performance. The Board of Taiwan Stock Exchange had approved NSP’s listing application on September 16, 2008 and NSP is expected to be listed on the main before the end of 2008