Nanosolar Inc., a solar start-up from San Jose, California, received contracts from three of Europe’s experienced renewable energy project developers to supply up to a gigawatt of copper indium gallium selenide-based thin-film solar panels.
The company will supply Germany’s Belectric Trading GmbH and Plain Energy GmbH, and Paris-based utility EDF Energies Nouvelles SA with utility-grade thin-film solar panels over the next three to six years, according to a statement from Nanosolar.
Nanosolar utility panels currently produced by the company have a conversion efficiency of around 10 percent, which tells how much sunlight the panel can convert to electricity. However, the Fraunhofer Institute for Solar Energy and the United States’ National Renewable Energy Laboratory confirmed last month that the panel model has reached 11.6 percent conversion efficiency while individual cells were rated at13.9 percent efficiency.
In a statement, the company said that printing indium gallium selenide semi-conductor material and nanoparticle inks onto cheap aluminum foil, called as “roll-to-roll printing process”, can reduce production costs to below $.60 cents a watt “within the next several years.” The company also said their solar cells can last more than 25 years guaranteed by a 25-year warranty.
In comparison, First Solar Inc., the world’s largest thin-film solar company, said in February that its panels cost $.75 cents a watt to produce and has a conversion efficiency of 11.6 percent. Instead of aluminum foil, the company uses vacuum to coat glass with cadmium-telluride, a competing material used in the thin-film industry.
Cells made from silicon, the dominant solar cell material in the market, can convert sunlight to electricity with up to 20 percent efficiency. Aside from being more effective at converting sunlight to electricity, copper indium gallium selenide-based panels are less expensive to produce and more flexible to use.
Nanosolar has a 430-megawatt solar cell plant in San Jose and a 620-MW panel factory in Germany. The company aims to have a solar cell production capacity of 115 MW at its San Jose, California facility by the end of this year and at least double capacity each year thereafter.
The company raised $300 million in an equity financing round in 2008, bringing the total raised to near $500 million. This makes Nanosolar one of the most well-funded startups to date since it has raised close to half a billion dollars in funding within six years since its founding in 2002.
In comparison, First Solar, which pioneered thin-film solar technology in the world, has a commanding lead in thin-film solar with its cadmium telluride-based cells, with $12.73 billion in market capitalization. It currently has factories producing a total of 1.4 GW of thin-film products, with expansion plans for up to 2.7 GW by 2012.
Abound Solar is also in this market. The company was able to secure a $400-million loan guarantee from the Department of Energy and $110 million in equity financing last year to build a new factory and expand a 65-MW plant, giving Abound 840 MW in thin-film production capacity by the end of 2014.
