Twin Creeks Unwraps New Tool, Process to Slash Silicon Solar PV Costs | Renewable Energy News Article

renewableenergyworld.com 14 Mar '12, 6am

Twin Creeks Unwraps New Tool, Process to Slash Silicon Solar PV Costs | Renewable Energy News Article

Progressing further toward the goal of "grid parity" means continually refining all steps along the solar supply chain, from manufacturing to balance-of-systems. For silicon-based solar PV manufacturing, costs on the materials alone (silicon, process gases, silver paste, encapsulants, etc.) can be $0.60/Watt. One dollar per watt for solar, fully installed, is held up as the ultimate grid-parity goal — but that's still a long way off, and costs have to come down a lot more both in manufacturing and balance-of-systems. Some companies have figured the best way to reduce costs is by using less starting material. Today's conventional silicon-based solar PV manufacturing still means sawing silicon ingots into wafers 150 to 200 microns thick. This creates issues of kerf loss (material lost as sawdust) and wafer fragility, and requires the need to prep the new wafer's surface for ...

Full article: http://www.renewableenergyworld.com/rea/news/article/2012...

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@KennethLatta » 14 Mar '12, 2pm
Perhaps the solar cell manufacturing breakthrough we've all been waiting for. [link] @GreatDismal
@earth2017 » 14 Mar '12, 2pm
BREAKTHROUGH #solar #technology: [link] #PV plant located in #Mississippi!!
@buckybanjo » 14 Mar '12, 11am
A real solar PV technical breakthrough. I wonder how many years before commercialization. [link]
@WNCGBC » 14 Mar '12, 11am
Twin Creeks Unwraps New Tool, Process to Slash Silicon Solar PV Costs | Renewable Energy News Article [link] #avlgb
@SmartSolar » 14 Mar '12, 10am
This may not have any short term impact on costs at our solar product level, but one day...an exciting breakthrough [link]
@fuelcut » 14 Mar '12, 7am
RT @alainharrus: Twin Creeks Unwraps New Tool, Process to Slash Silicon Solar PV Costs | Renewable Energy News Article [link]
@alainharrus » 14 Mar '12, 6am
Twin Creeks Unwraps New Tool, Process to Slash Silicon Solar PV Costs | Renewable Energy News Article [link]