Solar Cells Info

By LEAH KRAUSS, UPI Energy Correspondent
TEL AVIV, Israel, Nov. 16, 2006  (UPI)

Source: United Press International
http://www.upi.com/Energy/view.php?StoryID=20061116-050127-6744r

Sharp’s announcement this week that it has higher-efficiency thin film solar cells underlines the potential of this technology to take over the solar market. “The adoption of an amorphous/microcrystalline thin-film tandem cell design, which uses stacked layers of amorphous silicon and microcrystalline silicon achieves a conversion efficiency of 8.5 percent — 40 percent higher than conventional amorphous solar cells — among the industry’s highest levels for thin-film silicon-based solar cells currently in volume production,” Sharp said in a statement Wednesday.

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Acquisition Accelerates Growth and Product Innovation

SAN JOSE, Calif., Nov 15, 2006

Source: SunPower Corporation Press Release Nov 15, 2006
http://investors.sunpowercorp.com/releasedetail.cfm?ReleaseID=218726

SunPower Corporation (Nasdaq: SPWR), a Silicon Valley-based manufacturer of the world’s highest-efficiency, commercially available solar cells and solar panels, today announced it has signed a definitive agreement to acquire PowerLight Corp., a privately owned solar systems provider based in Berkeley, Calif. PowerLight is a leading global provider of large-scale solar power systems, having designed and deployed hundreds of large-scale solar systems with a total capacity of more than 100 megawatts over the past ten years. The PowerLight acquisition is expected to be immediately accretive to SunPower’s non-GAAP earnings.(1)

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Sunday | November 5, 2006
Source: Jamaica-gleaner.com
http://www.jamaica-gleaner.com/gleaner/20061105/auto/auto6.html

The new VW samba bus is based on the classic version of the first VW Transporter from 1950, but the similarities are only skin-deep. Over 15 innovative ideas have been realised in the bus, which has been named ‘Chameleon’.

At Volkswagen’s Electronics Research Laboratory (ERL) in Palo Alto, California, you can currently take a look into the future. The packaging is a familiar face from the ’60s: the Samba-Bus. But although the bus is based on the classic version of the first VW Transporter from 1950, the similarities are only skin-deep. On the inside it features values going far into the future. America had a particular attachment to the Samba-Bus, or the ’21 Window Bus’ as it was affectionately known there. In its time it touched a whole new generation of Americans. Especially in California, it was the bus that symbolised the motorisation of young Americans, freedom and a new taste for life.
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Tue Nov 14, 2006 11:33am ET30
Source: Reuter News
http://today.reuters.com/news/articlenews.aspx?
type=scienceNews&storyid=2006-11-14T163256Z_01_L14702690_RTRUKOC_0_US-ENERGY-SOLAR.xml&src=rss

AMSTERDAM (Reuters) – A European consortium has improved the efficiency of silicon solar cells, hoping to reduce the cost of generating solar power, the Dutch energy research center ECN said on Tuesday. “Researchers increased the conversion (from sunlight to electricity) efficiency of large-area multicrystalline silicon solar cells to a record value of 18 percent,” ECN said in a statement.

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By Alan Joch
Source: Plenty magazine
http://plentymag.com/features/2006/11/sand_trap.php

High oil prices, growing interest in alternative energy, and decades of R&D all mean boom times for the solar industry, right? Not quite. Just when solar-panel sales should be skyrocketing, the industry finds itself grappling with a nagging shortage of polysilicon, the key ingredient in photovoltaic solar cells. Tight supplies are frustrating panel makers and causing investors to balk at backing public companies.

“Right now, I’d say we are in a correction phase for solar stocks,” says J. Peter Lynch, a private investment banker focused on renewable energy for alternative energy companies. “Wall Street said, ‘Jeez, these solar stocks have really run up,’ but then the light suddenly went on about the polysilicon shortage, and the stocks corrected by about 20 to 25 percent. The logic behind it is, ‘Whoops, we went too far.’”
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Thin-Film Startup Raises $35M

As the silicon shortage continues, investors focus on thin-film solar technologies.
October 27, 2006
source:  Redherring.com
http://www.redherring.com/Article.aspx?a=19435

Miasolé has raised $35 million in venture capital funding to begin producing its thin-film solar cells, CEO David Pearce said Friday.

The company wouldn’t disclose investors or terms of the deal, but previous investors include Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, VantagePoint Venture Partners, Firelake Strategic Technology Fund, Garage Technology Ventures, and Nippon Kouatsu Electric. The startup is using the money to expand, Mr. Pearce said. Miasolé is building a factory with the capacity to produce 50 megawatts-worth of cells annually at its offices in Santa Clara, he said. He added that the company has additional manufacturing plans, but said he wouldn’t disclose details.

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By Joanna Glasner, Nov, 06, 2006
Source: Wired.com
http://www.wired.com/news/technology/0,72058-0.html?tw=wn_technology_1

In a world where sun-powered garden lights seem like a nifty idea, new technologies touted by solar energy startups sound very far out. Entrepreneurs promise that soon solar-energized “power plastic” will radically extend the battery life of laptops and cell phones. Ultra-cheap printed solar cells will enable construction of huge power-generating facilities at a fraction of today’s costs. And technologies to integrate solar power-generation capability into building materials will herald a new era of energy-efficient construction.

Those are ambitious goals for a technology famous for powering pocket calculators, but investors are paying heed. This year, solar startups have snapped up more than $100 million in venture capital to develop printable materials capable of converting sunlight into electrical power. Soaring energy demand, as well as short supplies of polysilicon, a key ingredient in most solar cells, is fueling interest in alternative materials.
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Monographs on Solar Cells

Thin Film Solar Cells: Fabrication, Characterization and Applications
(Wiley Series in Materials for Electronic & Optoelectronic Applications)
by Jef Poortmans and Vladimir Arkhipov (Hardcover – Nov 3, 2006)

Stability studies of cadmium telluride/cadmium sulfide thin film solar cells
Dissertation by Bhaskar Reddy, Tetali (Paperback – Oct 31, 2006)

High performance organic solar cell architectures
Dissertation by Kanzan, Inoue (Paperback – Oct 10, 2006)

Impact of secondary barriers on copper-indium-gallium-selenide solar-cell operation
Dissertation by Alexei O., Pudov (Paperback – Oct 31, 2006)

Resonance Raman study of interfacial electron transfer in dye sensitized solar cells
Dissertation by Jennifer Ann, Pollard (Paperback – Aug 23, 2006)

Modeling optical properties of thin film copper(indium,gallium)selenide solar cells using spectroscopic ellipsometry:
(Dissertation) by Scott H. Stephens (Digital – Aug 1, 2006)

Titanium dioxide dye-sensitized polyaniline solar cells
by Hooi-Sung Kim (Paperback – Mar 20, 2006)

in-Film Crystalline Silicon Solar Cells: Physics and Technology
Device physics of copper(indium,gallium)selenide(2) thin-film solar cells
by Markus Gloeckler (Paperback – Mar 20, 2006)

High performance organic solar cell architectures:
(Dissertation) by Kanzan Inoue (Digital – April 1, 2006)

Using resonance energy transfer to improve exciton harvesting in organic-inorganic hybrid solar cells:
(Dissertation) by Yuxiang Liu (Digital – May 1, 2006)

Deep level transient spectroscopy study of indium gallium arsenic nitride grown by MBE and MOCVD for multijunction solar cells
by Siva Prasad Kotamraju (Paperback – Mar 20, 2006)

Pulsed laser annealing and rapid thermal annealing of copper-indium-gallium-diselenide-based thin film solar cells
by Xuege Wang (Paperback – Mar 17, 2006)

Understanding and development of manufacturable screen-printed contacts on high sheet-resistance emitters for low-cost silicon solar cells
by Mohamed M. Hilali (Paperback – Mar 18, 2006)

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Lighting up the $1 trillion power market

Silicon Valley has changed the world once. Now, thanks to a wave of investment and innovation in solar power, it’s on to the next revolution: a massive disruption of the U.S. electricity market.

By Tom McNichol and Michael V. Copeland,
Business 2.0 Magazine October 30 2006
Source; CNNMoney.com
http://money.cnn.com/2006/10/26/magazines/business2/solar_siliconvalley.biz2/?postversion=2006102610

There’s a missile-bunker vibe you get when walking into Solaicx, a Silicon Valley startup that manufactures the silicon wafers that are the building blocks of solar panels.

In one half of the nondescript Santa Clara warehouse, three men sit hunched on a wood platform 8 feet above the cement floor, their eyes locked on two monitors. The screens show data and video gathered from a 24-foot-tall steel tower. The tower begins in a squat, gourd-shaped base and tapers to a cannon-size column with a long drum spinning slowly on top. Thick power cables snake down its sides. Another sci-fi-looking tower rises up off to one side of the building.

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Chinese entrepreneur makes good at home

Thursday, October 12, 2006
By Andrew Batson in Wuxi, China, The Wall Street Journal

Source:
http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/06285/729737-82.stm

When he arrived in Australia 18 years ago as a physics student, Shi Zhengrong scraped by on a meager stipend from the Chinese government that he supplemented by working at a restaurant.

A doctorate, several patents, two solar-power companies and a $455 million initial public offering later, Dr. Shi is one of the richest people in China.

Suntech Power Holdings Co., the company he founded in 2001 in the flat, green lands of the Yangtze River Delta, has quickly become one of the world’s largest producers of photovoltaic equipment, which converts sunlight into electricity. Its combination of the latest technology and developing-world prices has helped it gain market share from more-established, and expensive, producers.

Dr. Shi’s wealth, comprised almost entirely of his holdings of Suntech stock, has fluctuated in value along with company’s volatile share price, from a low of about $1.3 billion to a peak of a little more than $3 billion, with a current value of around $1.7 billion. It is, by some estimates, the largest private fortune of anyone living in mainland China.

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