1366 Technologies - Cast Silicon Wafers = 40% Cost Reduction

[MitchJi]

Hi,

game-changer?

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/06/17/dept-of-energy-makes-150m_n_879542.html?ir=Green

On Friday, Secretary of Energy Stephen Chu announced a "game changing" development in solar energy. A company called 1366 Technologies, headquartered in Lexington, Mass., has developed a silicon solar wafer that would cut the cost of solar cell manufacturing by an estimated 50 percent.

The wafer technology was developed with the support of a pilot innovation investment program housed under the Department of Energy, known as the Advanced Research Projects Agency - Energy (ARPA-E). According to director Arun Majumdar, "ARPA-E is looking for high risk ideas that, if successful, can be high impact. Those that don't exist today."

Unlike traditional wafers--which are sliced from a large block, resulting in considerable losses of material (up to 50 percent)--these new wafers are individually cast to specific measurements, a more efficient model of production.

In 2009, ARPA-E made an initial $4 million dollar investment in 1366 Technologies, and on Friday, announced it would make an additional $150 million dollar loan guarantee to take the company's research and development to the next level.

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/06/17/b...nt/17guarantee.html?_r=2&scp=1&sq=1366&st=cse

WASHINGTON — The Energy Department plans to announce on Friday that it will provide a $150 million loan guarantee to a company in Massachusetts that has developed a radical new way to make the silicon wafers for solar cells at a far lower cost.

The company, 1366 Technologies, has invented a way to cast the wafers at the desired dimensions — 200 microns thick, or about eight thousandths of an inch — rather than slicing them from a big block and losing up to half the material as dust.

The technology could cut the price of manufacturing a solar cell by roughly 40 percent, the venture says. (The company’s name refers to the amount of solar energy, in watts, that hits a square meter of the earth’s atmosphere.)

“This project is a game-changer that could dramatically lower the cost of photovoltaic solar cells,” the secretary of energy, Steven Chu, said in a prepared statement...

http://www.1366tech.com/
http://www.1366tech.com/technology/direct-wafer/

Direct Wafer Technology

Current wafer manufacturing is a multi-step, energy- and capital-intensive process that wastes 50% of the valuable silicon feedstock.

1366’s Direct Wafer technology forms a standard, 156mm multi-crystalline wafer directly from molten silicon in a semi-continuous, efficient, high-throughput process that eliminates silicon waste. The result is a more powerful, low-cost “kerfless” wafer that is environmentally friendly.

1366 sells Direct Wafers to cell manufacturers around the world.

 

[spinningmagnets]

Plan on the new solar panels to cost only 10% less than the competitors, at least for the first year. So, a 40% reduction in manufacturing cost will not lead to a sudden and radical drop in PV prices. However, this is definitely a good development, which will put pressure on the mainstream producers to lower their prices in order to ensure their longterm survival.