Back in 2006, semiconductor equipment giant Applied Materials unfurled a strategy that the company said would reduce the time and cost of putting up solar panel factories.
The world is now seeing the results of that. Signet Solar announced last week that it erected a thin film solar facility in Dresden, Germany: it took about ten months to complete. Construction of the 200,000 square foot production facility took about seven months and the installation of equipment took less than three months. The factory is based around an integrated manufacturing process from Applied. In a sense, it's like buying a solar factory in a box.
The plant is a generation 8.5 plant, meaning that it produces cells on sheets of glass measuring 5.7 square meters, or 2.2 meters by 2.6 meters. It’s the world’s first Gen 8.5 solar plant. In fact, most LCD TV makers haven’t even graduated to Gen 8.5 plants yet.
Signet will release prototypes in early June and full production will begin in the third quarter. The company hopes to expand production at the Dresden site to 100 megawatts in 2009. (Signet will discuss its Gen 8.5 plant at Intersolar, the solar hoedown taking place in June in Munich.)
And who is Signet Solar? It’s not an old-line solar company. It was formed in 2006 and is largely staffed by execs from the chip industry. Chairman and founder Prabhu Goel was a longtime exec at IBM and Cadence Design Systems, which makes software for designing chips. CEO Rajeeva Lahri came from Intersil. Vice president of business development Keshav Prasad comes from Applied Materials. (Side note: First Solar and DayStar Technologies have also recently hired Applied Materials/Solyndra alums.)
Signet will also open factories in India. Applied is also building turnkey factories for others.
One can argue that this is all smoke and mirrors. The chip industry is different than the solar industry and that there is no reason to think that newcomers can displace those with decades of experience. On the other hand, I am familiar with the chip industry. It is a competitive, unforgiving place. The industry thrives on cutting costs, grinding out technological advances at regular pace, ramping up production facilities rapidly and starting price wars. Applied helped a number of Taiwanese companies get into the semiconductor business in the 80s and now Taiwan is one of the top centers for chip innovation. Take it from me: the chip guys will change the solar industry.
Signet’s silicon thin film panels aren’t as efficient at generating power from the sun as crystalline solar panels. Signet says it will get about an eight to ten percent efficiency with its panels, close to half the efficiency of good crystalline panels. But the company says it uses much less raw materials and thus they cost less.
