Photovoltaic Supply Chain and Cross-Cutting Technologies

The Photovoltaic (PV) Supply Chain and Cross-Cutting Technologies project identifies and accelerates the development of unique PV products or processes that will impact the solar industry. The project supports the overall goals of the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) Solar Energy Technologies Program (SETP or Solar Program).

The PV Supply Chain and Cross-Cutting Technologies activities are a component of the systems development and manufacturing activities, within the SETP PV subprogram.

Background

Non-solar companies have many technologies and practices that are beneficial to the PV industry. These capabilities can be used in PV-specific manufacturing methods and products. Examples of such high-impact technologies include processing steps to improve throughput, yield, or diagnostics; material solutions to improve reliability or enhance optical, thermal, or electrical performance; or system components that streamline installation. The cost reduction as a result of these improvements might be small in terms of a single product or processing step, however the overall impact of these ideas become significant when implemented across the PV industry.

The funded projects range from automated assembly to semiconductor fabrication, and target manufacturing and product cost reduction with the potential to have an impact within 2 to 6 years on a substantial segment of the PV industry.

Awardees

DOE will invest up to $20 million in the following PV Supply Chain and Cross-Cutting Technologies projects. The investment was announced on Feb. 4, 2011.

1366 Technologies (Lexington, Massachusetts)
The goal of this project is to further develop a new, manufacturing process that dramatically reduces the cost of producing silicon wafers for use in silicon PV modules. The Direct Wafer process delivers significant improvements in manufacturing efficiency since it does not require sawing individual wafers from blocks of silicon.

3M (St. Paul, Minnesota)
The goal of this project is to develop and commercialize a flexible, highly transparent Ultra Barrier Topsheet that will enable successful commercialization of flexible photovoltaic modules.

PPG (Cheswick, Pennsylvania)
The goal of this project is to develop the materials, coating designs, and manufacturing processes necessary to commercialize a new glass article for the Cadmium Telluride (CdTe) module manufacturing industry.

Varian Semiconductor (Gloucester, Massachusetts)
The goal of this project is to reduce the cost of manufacturing interdigitated back contact cells, the most efficient silicon solar cells on the market.

Veeco (Lowell, Massachusetts)
The goal of this project is to accelerate the research and development, integration and commercialization of an innovative thin film CIGS (Copper Indium Gallium diSelenide) PV multi-stage thermal deposition production system in order to manufacture cost-efficient CIGS PV solar cells.