Big Watts, Low Cost

A method developed by US researchers for making solar panels is closing in on mass production and could bring us the 50 pence per Watt device

Solar energy conversion is potentially one of the most powerful methods to reduce our reliance on fossil fuels. However, the photovoltaic materials used to convert sunlight into electricity are expensive and inefficient, which makes the wide scale adoption of solar energy unviable with present technology. Now, Walajabad Sampath of Colorado State University, in Fort Collins, and colleagues have developed a new way to make photovoltaic materials that overcomes the problem of cost and inefficiency by allowing solar energy to be produced at a fraction of the cost of conventional solar panels and so could cut the price of solar power generation to below the $1 per Watt threshold.

Walajabad Sampath

Sampath and colleagues have developed a continuous, automated manufacturing process for solar panels by developing a method for creating a thin film of the PV material cadmium telluride on glass instead of using standard high-cost crystalline silicon. The resulting devices are more efficient at converting sunlight into electricity, 11-13% efficient, which could make these panels competitive with generic power from the electrical grid in many parts of the world.

This technology offers a significant improvement in capital and labour productivity and overall manufacturing efficiency, explains Sampath, who is director of Colorado State’s Materials Engineering Laboratory, The current market is over $5 billion annually and additional markets are developing.

Generic solar panel (Photo by David Bradley)

To commercialize the invention, Sampath and colleagues Kurt Barth and Al Enzenroth formed AVA Solar and have subsequently raised two rounds of funding and been awarded a $3 million ($1.5m) grant from the US Department of Energy’s Solar America Initiative.

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