California-based MiaSolé has signed a multiple year purchase agreement to supply 600 megawatts of copper indium gallium selenide (C.I.G.S.) thin-film photovoltaic solar panels to Germany’s juwi Solar G.m.b.H.
MiaSolé, a leading producer of C.I.G.S. thin-film panels, will deliver an initial 50 MW of solar panels in 2011.
“The long-term nature and volumes outlined in the current supply agreement with MiaSolé enable juwi to continue its plan of rapid growth,” said Lars Falck, managing director of juwi Solar.
MiaSolé also agreed to ship 7.5 MW of C.I.G.S. photovoltaic modules by the second half of 2010 for juwi Solar’s ground-mounted and rooftop solar projects in Germany. These contracts follow a 1-MW shipment to the German solar developer last quarter for its projects in Germany and San Antonio, Texas.
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Juwi Solar has installed about 500 MW of solar power around the world. The company is also involved in wind development, with over 600 MW of wind energy installed worldwide.
MiaSolé’s solar products incorporate a glass-glass design apt for most severe snow load requirement and include design features, such as low open circuit voltage and interconnecting cables that lower the balance of systems cost compared with other thin-film modules.
The company claimed that a 1 micron-thick C.I.G.S. film can produce a photoelectric effect equivalent to the photoelectric output of 200 micron- to 300 micron-thick of crystalline silicon wafer.
C.I.G.S. films also produce significantly higher electricity per unit of material because it is a direct band-gap semiconductor, in which the state of minimum energy in the conduction band and the state of maximum energy in the valence band have the same momentum. In contrast, crystalline silicon is an indirect band-gap semiconductor.
Experts predict that the efficiency of low-priced C.I.G.S. thin-film solar modules will rise to 15 percent, while the market share of thin-film power plants is expected to reach around 30 percent in 2012.
Meanwhile, German scientists at the Zentrum für Sonnenenergie-und Wasserstoff-Forschung Baden-Württemberg have raised the efficiency of C.I.G.S. thin-film solar cells to 20.3 percent, which will help improve the cost-effectiveness of C.I.G.S. cells over the medium term.
