Happy Birthday, solar coaster!!!

the solar coaster turns one year old today!

Here's the birthday wish list:

For its birthday, the solar coaster wishes that over the next year, governments round the world adopt progressive policies promoting solar power and other renewables, such as feed-in tariffs and net metering, and increase allocation of public funding to basic R&D in the renewables sector.

At the same time, the solar coaster also wishes that research labs and solar companies the globe over continue to make headway in reducing the cost of solar, not just by improving solar conversion efficiencies but also by reducing costs in balance-of-systems, in addition to non-technological (i.e. installation, financing, interconnection, etc.) aspects.

Finally, the solar coaster hopes that solar energy is further able to contribute to the poverty alleviation causes in the developing world, but delivering energy to remote rural areas not connected to electricity grids.

the solar coaster has been proud to bring solar news and analysis for the past twelve months, and looks forward to another twelve and many more ahead!

SunPower and IBM Claim Higher Efficiencies; DuPont Enters Thin Film Market

SunPower Reaches 23.4% Cell Efficiency
SunPower Corporation announced that it has produced a full-scale, five-inch prototype solar cell with an efficiency of 23.4%. This is a world-record for a large area solar cell according to the company.

IBM Also Claims Major Boost in Solar Cell Efficiency...
IBM has managed to squeeze 230W of power on to a centimeter square of solar panel using concentrator photovoltaics. The energy was then converted to 70W of usable electric power, the best power efficiency yet achieved, the company claims.

...and Replants Chip-Cooling Tech in Solar Farms
IBM has developed technology that will let solar cells withstand the heat of more than a 1,000 suns...representatives from IBM Research's photovoltaics research will present a method for cooling concentrating photovoltaics, a solar design where light is magnified onto high-performance solar cells.

DuPoint to Enter Thin Film Amorphous Silicon Market
DuPont (NYSE: DD) announced that it will soon begin construction on a research center in Hong Kong and a manufacturing facility in Shenzhen to support the rapidly growing photovoltaic (PV) solar energy industry

India May Set Up Solar Energy Commission
The Centre proposes to set up a Solar Energy Commission, with equal participation from the private sector. It is to tap the solar energy potential for meeting the future energy needs of the country.The initial investment for the project will be around $ 10 billion.

Barriers to Solar Energy's Blockbuster Promise
Green Tech Blog reflects on what is holding back the solar explosion in California.

Fun Solar Tech of the Month: Solar Lilypads!

HelioVolt's new thin-film recors; BrightSource lights up with more funding

Austin, Texas-based solar startup HelioVolt announced that it has reached 12.2 percent efficiency with its copper indium gallium selenide (or CIGS) solar cells, which are ideal for built-in PV applications. This is getting ever so closer to the 15 to 20% range of most crystalline based PV efficiencies.

HelioVolt's "secret weapon" is its manufacturing process, dubbed FASST™. According to the company's website, FASST™ is "the fastest and most cost-effective technology for printing thin-film CIGS on the market today[,]10 to 100 times faster than current processes."

Elsewhere, solar thermal company BrightSource Energy has shored up an additional $115 million in Series C financing. Investors included Google.org, VantagePoint Venture Partners, BP Alternative Energy, Statoil Hydro Venture, and Cargill subsidiary Black River. Existing investors DBL Investors, Draper Fisher Jurvetson, and Chevron Technology Ventures also participated.


BrightSource's "distributed power tower" technology uses an array of mirrors or lenses known as "heliostats" that concentrate sunlight onto a liquid housed in a "solar boiler." The heated liquid in turn makes steam that turns an electricity turbine. For more on BrightSource's technology, go here. As a testament to BrightSource's technology, California utility Pacific Gas and Electric Company recently signed a contract with BrightSource for up to 900 megawatts (MW) of solar thermal power.

Polysilicon Shortage --> Think Film + mSi

With polysilicon shortages extending at least through the rest of the year, it is not surprising that we are thin film technologies continue to buzz. Another alternative has emerged--metallurgical silicon. But a little more on that later.

Some analysts forecasts explosive growth of 70% CAGR in the thin film sector from 2007 through 2010. Indeed, not only did thin film behemoth First Solar report record earnings last week, we have also seen a flurry of thin film deal announcements:

• Oerlikon Solar and Chinese company Baoding Tianwei sign a deal for a turnkey thin-film PV module production line in Bao Ding, China.
• China Nuvo establishes a pilot copper indium gallium selenium thin film plant in Chengdu, China.
• Peng Xiaogend, the CEO of LDK Solar is starting his own separate thin film venture.
  
• Xunlight announces it has received $22 million in investments. Although its thin film technology is, unlike most thin film technologies, silicon-based, it has plans to commercialize cadmium telluride-based thinn film.
• Vertically-integrated OptiSolar received $38.3 million in funding earlier this year.
• Sencera raises $3.6 million to build a 1MW PV manufacturing platform.
• Suniva raised $50 million and recently made it to the Greentech Media's Top Ten list.
  
• Sunovia, a cadmium-telluride specialist, raised $12 million and some say this is the company that may give First Solar a run for its money.
  

A European engineer at the 6th Solar Silicon Conference in Munich, Germany, April 1-3, 2008 says it best:

People have laughed about thin film, now they don't laugh anymore, and in two to three years you will see First Solar as biggest thin film producer going through the roof. Imagine the decline in silicon usage with thin film.

Metallurgical Silicon
Rather than discard silicon altogether, some companies are replacing polysilcion with metallurgical grade silicon (mSi). Q-cells, among the word's top solar module manufacturers, is taking a step in that direction by using mSi , almost exclusively at an upcoming 160 MW Line VII of its 300 MW solar cell facility in Malaysia. The mSi will be supplied by Becancour Silicon, a division of Timminco.

Metallurgical-grade Silicon

According to this article,

Metallurgical-grade silicon is vastly cheaper to produce and ramp than polysilicon. Granted, the purity levels are lower and efficiencies suffer, but development work at Becancour Silicon has shown that impurity levels have been reduced dramatically in only a few years, especially in relation to boron, carbon and oxygen levels.

Besides Timminco, this piece on Seeking Alpha highlights other companies, such as Dow Corning, Elkem Solar and Global Speciality Metals, that are also getting into the mSi game.

Just how what kind of efficiencies do mSi-based solar panels have? I can't say for sure yet; my canvass of abstracts of scientific articles on the web suggest anywhere between the 8 to 10% range (which is comparable to thin film cells in real-life, i.e. non-lab, conditions), but I have not been able to confirm if these are in lab or real-life conditions. I hope to uncover more insight for you in future posts.

SUNRGI and the Promise of 5 cents/kwh Solar Power

Utility-scale solar power continues to make the news. The U.S. Department of Energy has announced a US$60 million, five-year R&D grant package for the development of concentrated solar power. In the past few weeks, the likes of SkyFuel, eSolar, Infinia and Stirling Energy Systems have all received some high profile financing. Earth2Tech also has two great articles--one on the 11 leading players in solar thermal seeking to operate in the southwest USA, and another on 8 obstacles facing the industry.

But amidst the solar storm of news, one potentially game-changing company caught my attention--SUNRGI, a Reno, Nevada company that says it is 12 to 15 months away from commercializing large scale solar power at 5 cents per Kwh, which make it easily competitive with coal.

So game-changing, in fact, that Sunrgi has created its own category of technology that it dubs Xtreme Concentrated Photovoltaics (XCPV). As the name implies, it combines the best of both concentrated solar power technology and photovoltaics, a technology combination shared by the likes of SolFocus and Energy Innovations. The likes of eSolar, Infinia and Sterling Systems are solar thermal systems and do not have the PV component, but instead rely on the concentrated heat to heat a liquid that is then used to heat water to run conventional electricity steam turbines.

Here's how SUNRGI claims it can achieve the goals that that Google shares:

1. The XCPV system can concentrate sunlight more than 1,600 times its normal intensity. According to Greentech Media, this is almost twice what Energy Innovations is able to achieve (823 times), and more than three times what Soliant can achive (500 times).

2. This extreme concentration reduces the amount of costly solar cell material needed to generate any given amount of electricity.

3. It boasts a PV efficiency of 37.5% (compared to about 20% of the top-performing PV cells without concentration, or 7 to 9% of most thin-film technologies). The company website suggests it is using PV technology developed from Boeing's spectrolab, and another blog source suggests that it is a triple-junction PV cell.

4. Its proprietary COOLMOVE heat transport technology swiftly prevents this undesirable heat buildup to that the PV cells are actually kept cooler than their nominal operating temperature, thus extending their useful life.

5. The XCPV system tracks the sun as it moves across the sky from sunrise to sunset. The company claims that in any given day, its tracking system "will capture and convert 175% more sunlight than a fixed system at the same advertised peak power rating."

Furthermore, the XCPV system touts its modular design as key feature that allows for distribution over multiple sub-stations over suitable pieces of land, and its upgradeability, which allows for its systems to take advantage of advances in technology (although few details are provided as to how upgrading of XCPV modules actually work).

If SUNRGI is truly able to deliver this product in the next year or so that it promises to, the solar industry will blow past the cautiously optimistic expectations that this Platts article has for the industry.

I’ve Got One Hand in My Pocket and the Other is Holding a Solar Panel

This post is published simultaneously in The Green Leap Forward.

Ecopowered Solutions (EPS), a Beijing and Colorado based startup, aims to bring pocket-sized solar cell batteries, especially to the remote areas of the developing world. EPS’ product, dubbed the SunCell, is a portable solar chargeable battery device that can recharge a whole host of consumer electronics including mobile phones, mp3 players, digital cameras and bluetooth devices (but not laptops as laptops charge at a much higher voltage than SunCell’s maximum voltage setting of 9 volts).

Measuring 5.1 by 3.4 by 0.9 inches and weigh just half a pound (225 kg), SunCell consists of 1.5 watts of monocrystalline photovoltaic panels coupled with an internal lithium ion battery. The SunCell requires 8 to 12 hours of direct sunlight to be fully recharged and when fully charged can typically recharge mobile phone batteries of average capacities three complete times before the SunCell itself requires a recharge.

One of the drivers of growing electricity demand worldwide is the proliferation of portable consumer electronics. A report by In-Sat forecasts the market of portable consumer electronic devices to grow from 2.7 billion units in 2007 to 3.1 billion in 2011. Harnessing solar power to power these portable devices addresses two major issues–first, it relieves electricity demand from an already overstrained electricity grid. Second, it allows users in remote areas without access to grid-based electricity (read, people in much of the developing world) to recharge their mobile phones.

Indeed, besides being a clean tech company, EPS has a social mission to bring clean solar power to the developing world. Kip Stringfellow, the founder and CEO of EPS sat down with The Green Leap Forward to talk about his business, his product and his vision.

GLF: How did the idea for creating a portable solar powered battery charger come about?

KS: Basically, when I first started I felt that there is a lot of potential out there for products that can be really useful and also utilize renewable energy. People are starting to care more and more about renewable energy and everyone always seems to be running out of power for their various electronic devices like cell phones, cameras, and mp3 players. I though a solar powered battery charger would really be a unique product to fill this demand and solar products also allow me to focus on another area I’m really passionate about, international development. There are billions of people in the world without access to electricity and by providing a power source, a whole new range of opportunities become available. Lighting systems, cell phone use in off grid locations, and many other applications open up once you have a reusable power source. I’m trying to find as many ways as possible to get my products into the hands of people that could really use them to change their lives by donation programs I am setting up and also through partnerships I am trying to form to distribute the SunCell in developing countries.

GLF: There are other competing products now in the market. How does the SunCell distinguish itself from other solar powered batter chargers?

KS: There are two main differences between the SunCell and other solar chargers. The SunCell features an internal lithium-ion battery that has over twice the battery capacity of many of the other solar chargers on the market. This means that you don’t have to recharge it as frequently and you can have more power available for when you need it the most. Also, the SunCell has a built-in LED flashlight that comes in handy at night. It can run nonstop for about 6 days so you always have backup light source if you need one.

GLF: What is the biggest market for SunCell currently, and where else are you seeking to expand?

KS: Right now our largest market is in the US but we are actively trying to expand into Europe and other locations around the world. We have received a lot of interest so we are working hard to set up partnerships in different countries in order to distribute and sell as many SunCells as possible. It’s a win-win situation because by expanding sales we do better as a company but we also provide more and more people with a portable power source charged from renewable solar energy.

We are also really trying to expand our donation program by working with international education and health organizations that focus on communities with no access to an electricity grid. So far, donated SunCells have been sent to Haiti, Malawi, Rwanda, Lesotho, and Panama.

GLF: And what about China?

KS: China is an enormous market and like many countries in the world, it is obviously a place where renewable energy is definitely needed. We are working on trying to get a sales program going in China even though this currently presents more challenges than operating a business in the US.

GLF: How is the SunCell priced? How does this compare to competing products in the market?

KS: The SunCell currently retails for about $120 in the US. I believe the SunCell is well priced because of its advantages over other solar chargers. Some other solar chargers in the market are cheaper and others are more expensive. From all the competition I have seen though, I believe the SunCell is definitely the best value and it has better capabilities than some other products that are more expensive.

We also have special pricing for countries where we feel the full $120 retail value will prohibit people from being able to buy the SunCell. I am really focused on trying to get as many SunCells out there as possible so in developing countries, a lower retail price may be the only way for the SunCell to make a real impact. We also have special prices for NGOs and other international organizations that want to purchase the SunCell to distribute them in developing countries.

GLF: Tell us a little more of the donation program.

KS: EPS’ mission is to promote the use of alternative energy technologies and also to provide a vehicle for donating SunCells to people and organizations that can utilize the device to dramatically improve the quality of life in the communities where they are used. There is a link on our website that accepts donations that we pool together, and then we use the donated money to send SunCells and other products to programs in developing countries at cost. Currently, we are donating all SunCells to Partners in Health, one of the largest and most effective international health organizations. SunCells are currently being used by Partners in Health in many of the countries it has operations in such as Haiti and Malawi. They are used by the communities they work in to power cell phones in remote areas and they can be used as lighting systems for people that have no access to electricity.

GLF: It would seem that the needs of the customer in say a mature developed market like the US full of affluent eletronic gadget collectors would differ from that of low-income villagers in Kenya. The practical use of SunCells in developing countries with no grid electricity is pretty obvious. But how do you sell these to urbanites in well developed cities?

KS: You are right, we are really trying to address very different markets in very different countries. The SunCell clearly has a more vital use in places with no grid system but its versatility makes it a great product for those urbanites you mentioned in developed countries. The SunCell, at its core, is a portable battery that has the additional functionality of being able to recharge itself from the Sun. Its internal battery can be recharged with a power adapter that is included with the SunCell so it can be used as just a portable battery. So for urbanites it may be easier to recharge the SunCell from the wall, but with its solar panels the SunCell still provides a lot of value as an emergency power source and can also be extremely useful if those urbanites head out for a camping trip or spend some time off grid.

GLF: And I suppose there is also a symbolic value…

KS: Absolutely! EcoPowered Solutions is trying to combine two areas of focus into one. We are trying to promote clean, renewable solar energy and also improve the quality of life for people with no access to electricity. Solar power is currently one of the best and most effective ways for people in developing countries to have access to electricity and it’s just as easy for people to use in developed countries. All you have to do is put the SunCell in sunlight and everything else takes care of itself! We are really trying to provide simple, cost effective power solutions that anyone on the planet can use and enjoy. The idea is about everyone being able to have access to electricity no matter where they are or where they live.

Solar beats in India

I've hinted before that India is an emerging solar hub. In the estimation of leading venture capitalist, Vinod Khosla, the concentration of engineering talent emerging from India is poised to help India grow into a serious clean tech player. I've noticed quite a bit of solar business action this month on the Indian front, so I thought it would be worth compiling some these stories here:

Orb Energy, a provider of solar energy systems in India, a received a prestigious award for US$1 million from the U.S. State Department in support of the goals of the Asia-Pacific Partnership on Clean Development and Climate.

Moser Baer India Limited, a global technology company, recently announced that its subsidiary, Moser Baer Photo Voltaic Limited has signed an agreement with China-based LDK Solar for sale and delivery of high quality multicrystalline silicon wafers to MBPV over a ten-year period commencing in mid-2008 through 2017.

Clear Skies Solar, Inc. (OTCBB: CSKH.OB) announced a $20 million agreement, subject to financing, with Power Cube, a company located in Utter Pradesh, India to develop and construct the first of several solar energy projects in India.

Spire Corporation (Nasdaq: SPIR), a global solar company providing turnkey solar factories and capital equipment to manufacture photovoltaic modules worldwide, will provide Alpex Exports Pvt. Ltd. a photovoltaic module assembly line for that company's operations in New Delhi, India.