Photovoltaics

New approach aims to slash cost of solar cells

Thu, 08 Mar 2012 13:00:00 GMT

by Bill Scanlon, NREL

March 8, 2012 - Silicon wafers account for almost half the cost of today's solar photovoltaic (PV) panels, so reducing or eliminating wafer costs is essential to bringing prices down.

Current crystalline silicon technology, while high in energy conversion efficiency, involves processes that are complex, wasteful, and energy intensive. First, half the refined silicon is lost as dust in the wafer-sawing process, driving module costs higher. A typical 2-meter boule of silicon loses as many as 6,000 potential wafers during sawing. Second, the wafers produced are much thicker than necessary. To efficiently convert sunlight into electricity, they need only one-tenth the typical thickness.

NREL, DOE's Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL), and Ampulse have teamed on an approach to eliminate this waste and dramatically lower the cost of the finished solar panels. The aim is to create a less expensive alternative to wafer-based crystalline silicon solar cells.

By using a chemical vapor deposition process to grow the silicon on inexpensive foil, Ampulse is able to make the solar cells just thick enough to convert most of the solar energy into electricity. No more sawdust -- and no more wasting refined silicon materials.

Straight from pure silicon to high-quality crystal silicon film

NREL developed the technology to grow high-quality silicon. ORNL developed the metal foil that has the correct crystal structure to support that growth. And Ampulse is installing a pilot manufacturing line in NREL's Process Development Integration Laboratory (PDIL), where solar companies test their latest materials and processes.

With knowledge and expertise acquired from the PDIL pilot production line, Ampulse plans to design a full-scale production line to accommodate long rolls of metal foil.

The Ampulse process "goes straight from pure silicon-containing gas to high-quality crystal silicon film," said Brent Nelson, who runs the PDIL at NREL. "The advantage is you can make the wafer just as thin as you need it -- 10 microns or less."

Most of today's solar cells are made out of wafer crystalline silicon, though thin-film cells made of more exotic materials like gallium, arsenic, indium, arsenide, cadmium, and tellurium are making a strong push into the market.

The advantage of silicon is its abundance, as it is derived from sand. Its disadvantage is that purifying it into wafers suitable for solar cells is expensive and energy intensive.

Manufacturers add carbon and heat to sand to produce metallurgical-grade silicon, which is useful in other industries, but not yet suitable for making solar cells. This metallurgical-grade silicon is then converted to pure trichlorosilane (SiCl₃) or silane (SiH₄) gas.

Typically, the purified gas is converted to create a silicon feedstock at 1,000 degrees Celsius (°C). This feedstock is melted at 1,414°C and recrystallized into crystal ingots that are finally sawed into wafers. Think of it as the Rube Goldberg approach to creating a solar cell.

Instead, the Ampulse process backs up two steps. Rather than create a feedstock, it works with the silane directly and grows just the needed silicon right onto a foil substrate.

Combining NREL's deposition technique with ORNL's textured foil

A team of NREL scientists including Howard Branz and Chaz Teplin had developed a way to use a process called hot-wire chemical vapor deposition to thicken silicon wafers with perfect crystal coatings. Using a hot tungsten filament much like the one found in an incandescent light bulb, the silane gas molecules are broken apart and deposited onto the wafer using the chemical vapor deposition technique at about 700°C -- a much lower temperature than needed to make the wafer. The hot filament decomposes the gas, allowing silicon layers to deposit directly onto the substrate.

Armed with this new technique, Branz and Teplin searched for ways to grow the silicon on cheaper materials and still use it for solar cells.

They found the ideal synergy when visiting venture capitalists from Battelle Ventures asked them whether they could do anything useful with a breakthrough at ORNL called RABiTS (rolling assisted biaxially textured substrate). It was just the opportunity the two scientists had been seeking.

If metal foil is to work as a substrate, it must be able to act as a seed crystal so the silicon can grow on it with the correct structure. The RABiTS process forms crystals in the foil that are correctly oriented to receive the silicon atoms and lock them into just the right positions.

NREL and ORNL worked to combine their technologies using a small amount of funding from Battelle Ventures. Using the right intermediate "buffer layers" to coat the foil substrates, the researchers were able to replicate the desired foil crystal structure in the silicon layer grown over metal foil (epitaxial growth).

Establishing Ampulse Corporation

With a commitment to develop the new technology in cooperation with the two national labs, Battelle Ventures and Innovation Valley Partners joined forces to form Ampulse. Initially, Ampulse had very few employees and no offices -- just a name, an idea, and a commitment to develop the technology via the unique instrumentation and scientific expertise at the two national labs.

The company then established a $500,000 cooperative research and development agreement (CRADA) with NREL and a similar agreement with ORNL.

Ampulse also received a total of $900,000 from DOE's Technology Commercialization and Deployment funds at NREL and ORNL. Because Ampulse was started as a company with very low overhead, nearly all its initial funding went toward research efforts at NREL and ORNL.

"Our initial technology success from those funds enabled Ampulse to raise two rounds of venture capital," Branz said.

The company now has 13 employees and six full-time consultants and is currently working with 22 sponsored researchers from two national labs. The first employee at Ampulse, Steve Hane, remains its CEO.

A giant step toward the $1 per Watt goal?

"We have the potential to produce a 15%-efficient solar cell at less than 50 cents per watt with a fraction of the capital investment of other venture-funded PV companies," Hane said. "And that's due to our R&D collaborations with the national labs." Hane said the unique relationship between the national labs and venture capitalists should be a model for future technology transfers to the private sector.

Recently, with its SunShot Initiative, DOE challenged researchers to lower the cost of solar energy by two-thirds to $1 per watt installed. By eliminating costly silicon wafers -- but still using silicon as the core material -- the Ampulse approach has the potential to meet this target.

"The trick is to get as good material quality as you have in a wafer," Teplin said. "We're using our existing knowledge of how to grow silicon directly from a gas phase onto these metal foils."

Production line features vacuum chambers and quartz lamps

The production line being installed at NREL's PDIL consists of a half dozen cube-like vacuum chambers where foils are overcoated with buffer and silicon layers to fabricate solar cells. It was built to Ampulse's specifications by Roth & Rau Microsystems of Germany.

The new production system will also exchange samples with other NREL research and analysis equipment in the PDIL. NREL's "wafer replacement tool" will be connected to the Ampulse system and will have a robot that can retrieve samples while maintaining vacuum, preventing exposure of the sample to air.

To fabricate solar cells, metal foils are loaded into the Ampulse system, where quartz lamps heat them to a temperature of 850°C. First, the foils are coated with the necessary buffer layers. Then, the samples are transferred to a specially designed chamber where the key silicon layers are grown. The silicon is then exposed to atomic hydrogen to improve its electronic properties. Finally, solar cell junction and electrical contacts are developed.

"With this new tool, we will be able integrate NREL and ORNL technologies seamlessly and quickly," Teplin said. "Further, with access to all of NREL's other PDIL capabilities, we really expect technological progress to accelerate."

Branz summed up: "The main thing is that we can grow high-quality silicon layers very fast and without putting much energy into the process. That means the solar cells can turn out much cheaper than the wafer-based cells."

"Our process goes directly from gas to the epitaxial silicon phase, bypassing the growth and sawing phase," Ampulse's Director of Planning and Logistics, Mike Colby, said. "We made it large because we needed to demonstrate the scalability of the system."

"To accelerate time to market, we need to maximize the cycle speed," Colby added. "The goal is to achieve the crystal silicon performance that until now focused on thicker wafers -- and without having to use a 1,400°C furnace."

As skilled technicians tweaked the knobs of the potentially game-changing prototyping line, Colby said, "We've had good luck and a good relationship with NREL. The aim of NREL, and of the PDIL, is to work with the needs of business and help accelerate commercialization of new technologies. This definitely does that."

This article was originally published on NREL and was republished with permission in the Renewable Energy World network by www.RenewableEnergyWorld.com.

Update: More details on Apple's NC solar farm

Wed, 07 Mar 2012 20:26:00 GMT

March 7, 2012 - One month after revealing plans for a big solar project at its new data farm in North Carolina, Apple has opened the kimono a bit more to show the project's planned output, ready date, and one of the key partners.

Last month Apple disclosed plans to partly power its giant new data farm in Maiden, NC, with a 20 megawatt (MW) solar system. (Also part of the plan is a smaller fuel cell system, possibly supplied by Bloom Energy). Today, the San Jose Mercury News picked up on a new filing with the North Carolina Utilities Commission (NCUC) that lays out more details about the proposed 100-acre project, including size, possible cost, and the main technology supplier.

Some of the information is blocked as confidential — including maps and photographs of the site, projected costs, anticipated kilowatt and kilowatt/hour outputs (on- and off-peak), and terms of the electricity sale agreement — but here's what we can glean from the publicly available NCUC documents (filed under "SP-1642/Sub 0"):

Size and scope: The proposed 100-acre solar farm (total site is 121.47 acres), dubbed "Project Dolphin," will incorporate 14 PV installations, though the final number will to be determined based on input from the utility (Duke Energy), PV system provider (unidentified), and local permitting authorities. SunPower will provide its E20 435-watt photovoltaic modules (rated at 20 percent efficiency), on ground-mounted single-axis tracking systems," rotating on a north/south axis. Inverters will convert the DC output to AC. It's planned for 20MW energy output, with "just under 25 megawatts" (DC) generated at the PV module level.

Timeline: The project will be installed in phases, though the installations will be interconnected as they are completed. It is expected to start delivering power to the grid as early as October 2012, and all of it should be online by December 31.

What's not said: The documents don't directly get into costs either for Apple or Duke, except to say that there will be no discernable impact on Duke Energy's expansion plans or costs. For Apple, all it reveals is that the project will be self-financed from both current assets and ongoing operations, and represents "less than a quarter of a percent of positive cash/securities balance." However, in Apple's latest public filing as of Sept. 2011 (also listed in the NCUC docs) that cash/securities number is listed as $97 billion, so 0.0025 percent out of that is roughly $242 million.

Thin-film solar PV suppliers unite under "PVThin" banner

Tue, 06 Mar 2012 21:53:00 GMT

March 6, 2012 - A half-dozen makers of thin-film solar PV technologies are joining forces to promote the technology's "social, economic and environmental benefits."

PVThin, formed under Belgian laws (but claiming it will "register in all relevant government lists"), aims to "champion the role of thin-film PV and communicate the unique technological, environmental and socio-economic aspects of this cost effective and environmentally friendly solar technology," according to Andreas Wade, president of PVThin, in a statement. The group cites figures that thin-film technologies make up about 18 percent of global PV sales, up from "almost nothing a decade ago." Founding members include Abound Solar, Arendi, Calyxo, First Solar, GE Energy and 5N Plus.

The group says its goals are not in conflict with, but instead complement, those of other solar industry advocacy groups including the European Photovoltaic Industry Association (EPIA), the Solar Energy Industries Association (SEIA) in the US, and Germany's BSW. "[We do] not seek to create a rival organization," Wade emphasized.

We'll be talking with PVThin later this week for more specifics about its direction, but available info suggests a few early takeaways:

It's got cachet: First Solar as a charter member, inarguably a benchmark solar manufacturer of any size or technology, gives PVThin instant credibility; Wade is director of sustainable development at First Solar. Moreover, he's also chair of the EPIA's working group on sustainable development, which should be a collaborative bonus.

It's an exclusive club: The group emphasizes its focus is on thin-film PV using "chalcogenide" compounds -- more specifically, "sulfides, selenides, and tellurides, rather than oxides," the group says. That definition intentionally excludes, say, thin-film amorphous silicon (a-Si), preferring instead to emphasize chalcogenide compounds' "unique electrical and physical properties that have accelerated the development of mass-produced, affordable, high-yield solar modules with a good environmental profile from a life-cycle perspective," the group says. "It is to promote these unique properties, and how they positively impact energy security and climate-change mitigation, that PVThin was founded."

PVThin's initial membership is slanted heavily on the cadmium telluride (CdTe) side of thin-film solar PV: First Solar, Abound Solar, GE, Arendi, and Calyxo. 5N Plus supplies materials for CdTe, but also CdS, a starter material for making copper-indium-gallium-selenide (CIGS), the other prevalent thin-film solar PV technology. But PVThin isn't CdTe-exclusive; the group openly explains the benefits of both CdTe and CIGS, and says "any company from the chalcogenide thin-film PV value chain may become a member."

It's the softer side of solar PV: Among PVThin's missions is to promote the idea of "sustainability" with thin-film solar PV technology, invoking the "Life Cycle Analysis"(LCA) approach of adherence to environmentally responsible technology from raw materials sourcing to end-of-life collection and recycling. (This position, by definition, comes with a desire to exclude renewable energy technologies in general, and PV modules in particular, from the scope of the European Union’s Directive on the Restriction of Hazardous Substances [RoHS].) "Because of the small quantities and robustness of the unique semiconductor material used in each solar panel, thin-film PV requires much less energy to process and consequently offers the smallest carbon footprints and fastest energy payback times of current PV technologies, on a life cycle basis" -- almost twice as fast as average silicon solar panels.

The group also advocates for inclusion of PV into the EU's Directive on Waste Electrical and Electronic Equipment (WEEE) "state-of-the-art PV recycling and recovery programs and technologies in cooperation with other organizations." Thin-film technology, it points out, "lends itself to relatively simple mechanical and chemical recycling" to recover raw materials. "Commercial-scale recycling operations are already capable of recovering up to 95% of the semiconductor material and up to 90% of the glass for use in new solar panels and other glass products."

UAE's Microsol buying Solon's assets

Tue, 06 Mar 2012 19:46:00 GMT

March 6, 2012 - In the latest chapter for consolidation in the solar industry, Solon has agreed to be bought by Microsol, a solar cell manufacturer based in the United Arab Emirates (UAE), for an undisclosed amount.

A "Solon Energy Group" will be formed with "essential components" and "key assets" of Solon SE and its subsidiaries, including its US-based operation. About 600 jobs worldwide are being transferred over to the new group and other affiliates. Production will be consolidated to Fujairah in the UAE, though the main sites in Berlin-Adlershof (Germany), Tucson (USA), and Carmignano di Brenta (Italy) will be maintained, and Solon solar power systems will still be produced (at undeclared levels) in Germany and the US. Approval by Italian authorities is still pending.

Solon filed for insolvency (European lingo for "bankrupt") in December, carrying nearly €400 million of debt (as of Sept. 30) on just €32 million of working capital and a "negative shareholders' equity" of €103.1 million. A search for new investors began in January; rumors of Microsol's interest started percolating in recent weeks, and were confirmed by the company a few days ago. (An auction in late January handled what was left of the company's Tucson, AZ module manufacturing operation.)

Microsol, with "around 325 employees" in Fujairah (UAE's east coast, on the Indian Ocean), makes crystalline silicon (c-Si) solar cells and modules with "an EU counterpart," and plans to expand production capacity by 50 percent in 2012 to 225 megawatts; a 30MW module manufacturing facility was to come online at the end of 2011. The deal will help it expand beyond its "special emphasis" on India, to other markets in Europe and North America. It also sees strength in Solon's power plant business, R&D and product development, and marketing and distribution. "We will pursue an international growth strategy together with SOLON, which will open up enormous market potential," said Anjan Turlapati, chairman of Microsol, in a statement. Specifically to India, "the favorable political and economic circumstances [offers] great potential for the power plant businesses," he added. "Microsol's market access combined with SOLON's module, balance of system, and power plant expertise provide us with excellent prospects in India."

For Solon's part, Turlapati says the US will continue to be a focus, leveraging "access to low cost, efficient cell and module facilities, and expertise in providing complete system solutions for the commercial and utility-scale markets." Dan Alcombright, president/CEO of Solon's North American operations, raises the bar, calling Microsol's new ownership "the backing needed to continue our robust expansion in the US," and labeling his company "the antidote to the recent phenomenon of solar companies failing today."

Performing plastics: New marks for polymer solar cells

Mon, 05 Mar 2012 22:03:00 GMT

March 5, 2012 - Barely two months into the new year, we've seen a crop of new performance spanning the spectrum of solar cell technologies: thin-film (including CIGS, CdTe, and other), c-Si, some unknown combination, and even some with some nanoscale assistance.

Just in the past couple of weeks we've seen numbers trotted out for a different set of solar tech: organic (aka polymer aka plastic) solar cells, approaching and exceeding 10 percent conversion efficiency. That's a far cry from the high-teens of crystalline silicon or even low-teens for other thin-film options—but it's a magical number to spur further interest in the technology beyond lab-scale tinkering, notes Keith Emery, who manages NREL's cell and module performance characterization group. And it's significant for a technology which promises more simplified manufacturability, and widened applications where rigid modules cannot dream of going, from building integration (BIPV) to niche markets like being sewn onto travel gear.

UCLA researchers have unveiled a nearly 9-percent-efficient (NREL-confirmed) tandem polymer solar cell. A single-layer device topped out at around 6 percent; adding a new infrared-absorbing polymer from Sumitomo Chemical to the group's already 8.6 percent efficient cells spiked efficiency to 10.6 percent. The promise of tandem solar cells is in stacking layers of solar cells with sensitivity to different absorption bands, so that the overall device capture a wider set of the solar spectrum than single-junction solar cells, and thus harvest more energy. The key in this case, the researchers explain, was creating a specific low-band-gap–conjugated polymer for the solar cell structure. "Everything is done by a very low-cost wet-coating process," and the process "is compatible with current manufacturing," says Yang Yang, UCLA prof. of materials science and engineering and principal investigator on the research. He thinks the cells could reach 15 percent efficiency in the next few years. (More details are in this issue of Nature Photonics.)

Konarka, long a pusher of organic PV, says Newport Corp. has certified its next-generation solar cells with 9 percent single-junction efficiency. (Konarka points out that Newport's PV lab is accredited by the American Association for Laboratory Accreditation.) The technology is its "newest proprietary blue-grey polymer system," the firm points out.

A four-year, €14.2 million European research project under the European Commission's Seventh Framework Program (FP7) aims to develop better flexible plastic solar panels. The "SUNFLOWER" project ("SUstainable Novel FLexible Organic Watts Efficiently Reliable"), led by the Swiss Center for Electronics and Microtechnology with more than a dozen partners, started work in Oct. 2011 to increase the cells' efficiency and lifetime, and decrease production costs. Goals for an initial prototype include a "tandem" multilayer structure to increase efficiency, better-performing barrier layers and getters, and created on a roll-to-roll atmospheric printing process. "We have the chance to develop a technology that is ideally suited to manufacturing in the EU due to its high level of automation, need for highly trained personnel, low energy consumption, and close proximity to suppliers and markets," says project coordinator Giovanni Nisato from CSEM.

Eschewing efficiency numbers for sheer brawn, New Energy Technologies recently built a 170-square-centimeter organic PV device that's 14 times larger than its predecessors. The technology spray-deposits tiny solar cells a quarter the size of a grain of sand onto a substrate, without high-temperature or high-vacuum methods.

While breaking through the 10 percent efficiency mark for plastic solar cells is an important milestone, equally important is perspective, notes Emery. It's one thing to make them harvest energy and conduct electricity, but it's another thing to make them stable (inconveniently, "these things are unstable in air and water," he notes) and then another to figure out how to package them into a commercial-scale alternative. Thin-film solar tech options such as copper-indium-(gallium)-selenide (CIS/CIGS) similarly boast the option to be made flexible, but as yet it hasn't worked out at a commercial scale; CIS still gets rigidly sandwiched between glass. "It's not a done deal to compete with costs because of packaging needs," he emphasizes.

Still, while commercial-scale power generation from polymer solar cells may be years away (if ever), there could be lower-hanging fruit: powering consumer electronics devices, where efficiency and stability are less of a concern. Assuming the technology adopts improved packaging and maintains its simplified manufacturability, it should be attractive enough to power all sorts of personal gadgetry. (CIS technology got its start in the early 1980s on solar calculators, Emery points out.) Few digital gadgets last longer than a few years before being upgraded out of necessity or more likely must-have-it-ness — no 20-year warranty or PPA required.

Tandem solar cell structure. (Source: UCLA)

How to survive solar's unhealthy consolidation

Fri, 02 Mar 2012 20:56:00 GMT

March 2, 2012 - The solar sector is once again entering a period of increased activity, but not the good kind, as several firms have announced losses and cutbacks, temporary shutdowns, and closing down entirely. As the solar photovoltaic (PV) industry plows through the current consolidation — and eventually out of it — here are six things to consider and remember:

— Stop invoking grid parity. The promise of grid parity, which was supported by many price/cost and technology roadmaps while lacking a definition that included healthy margins, should be replaced with the goal of energy independence. After the expense of installing the technology, running costs are minimal, resulting in (for all system sizes) independence from utility-rate volatility for system owners, and if the utility is the system owner, control over its costs. Prices for natural gas and oil vacillate up and down. Once a PV system is installed there is stasis, stability and freedom from the anxiety felt when utility bills are opened, and from increases in the price of raw materials.

— Carpe Diem for existing and new markets. Realize that PV will not necessarily be an easy sale in areas where energy rates are already low. Eventually, though, even these areas will experience volatility, so seize the day, and the opportunities, when they present themselves. And beware: in the US, underbidding on PPAs will lead to systems that are either unprofitable or un-installable.

— Steer clear of bandwagon jumping. Resist the siren songs of unreasonable goals (system prices of $1.00/Watt-peak), announcements that grid parity has been achieved (as manufacturers fail weekly), or announcements of the next big market (which almost never prove true or supportable). Stick to developing reliable technology including balance-of-system (BoS) that generates electricity for around 30 years, perfecting installation practices, and developing innovative business models that will stand the test of time.

— Find and trim costs away from the module. There is ample proof that today's low prices for module technology are unsupportable in over the long term. We should not be proud of an achievement that drives manufacturers globally out of business. And system prices and costs today are based on module prices that are not supportable; there is nothing to brag about here either. There is much learning still to come in BoS innovation, along with installation design and installation efficiency — and there are out-of-control costs for these entities as well, such as labor, raw materials and consumables, let alone for equipment.

— Accept that we're still learning. The multi-megawatt "utility-scale" installation category is relatively new, and was driven by the feed-in tariff (FiT) model in Europe. The industry is still learning how to manage these large systems, from installation design to technology choice to financing to project stewardship; much more field data is necessary to continue this learning. Along the way, underperforming systems will be discovered, and this will lead to system design learning. There is no clear trend here; learning takes time.

— Quit infighting. The current PV industry infighting is painful to watch. As an industry we are in this together and we all need each other.

It is true that all industries experience consolidation. However, for solar PV the overbuilding of manufacturing capacity was based on the belief that either the FiT incentive model would never end, or that grid parity would be achieved by the time it did. Today, the FiT model is unstable with erratic changes to rules and tariffs, largely unprofitable, and coming to an end. Grid parity has been achieved, but at the cost of solvency. A healthy consolidation would see more mergers, and not achieved on the back of the almost blanket failure of an entire industry. This is not it.

Why Solar Flagships' peril won't derail PV in Australia

Thu, 01 Mar 2012 20:25:00 GMT

By Michael Barker, NPD Solarbuzz

March 1, 2012 - When Australia's Solar Flagships program was first announced in May 2009, the program was met with much fanfare, heralded as the path to proving solar photovoltaics' (PV) viability in the Australian market. Initially the program had a total budget of approximately A$1.5 billion and a goal of installing 1 gigawatt (GW) of solar electricity, split equally between PV and concentrated solar thermal (CSP).

The program soon ran into troubles, however, when in late-2009 the Federal Government announced it would scale back its initial Phase 1 goal of 500 MW (split equally between PV and CSP) by 2015 to 400 MW (250 MW from CSP and the remainder PV). Then, in May 2010 the government retracted some A$220 million of the program's budget and stated that it might not proceed with Phase 2 of the program, but would make that decision after Phase 1 was completed.

One year later, in May 2011, a short-list of applicants was released (see below) paired down from a total of 52 submissions:

Of the short-listed PV projects, installed costs per watt ranged from A$3.00-6.00 and showed a variety of project types (multi-site projects and single-site) and proposing a variety of technology types:

Finally, two years since initial introduction, the two consortia winners of Phase 1 were announced: a PV project made up of BP Solar, Pacific Hydro and Fotowatio Renewable Ventures; and a CSP project backed by Wind Prospect, Areva, and CS Energy. These projects were awarded government funds, both state and federal, that would provide almost half of the total funding required for each project. The project backers then had until December 15, 2011 to secure power purchase agreements and financing for the remaining project costs.

Neither of the consortia were able to accomplish either of these tasks by the deadline, however, and both were beset by problems with members. BP announced it would no longer develop solar projects after Solar Flagships, and CS Energy withdrew from its consortium in February 2012. This has led the Federal Government to re-open Phase 1 of the program to its original shortlist, encouraging those companies to re-apply given the latest developments.

The trials and tribulations of the program show several things that continue to affect the Australian PV market:

— The Federal Government continues to demonstrate that it is unable to properly design or administer solar incentive programs. For the past several years, Australia has been caught in a boom/bust cycle as incentive programs are introduced, quickly exceeded, and then just as quickly canceled — only for a new program to be introduced soon after which follows the same pattern. The primary flaws of the Solar Flagships program, besides the program cuts in scope and budget, are an approval process that moved too slow to adjust to changes in the PV industry and a mechanism that focused too narrowly on a certain system segment. Since the program was announced, system prices have almost halved over two years, led primarily by decreases in module prices. And retail electricity rates have continued to increase so that large-scale PV systems now can produce electricity at levelized costs less than commercial or residential retail rates. The program also has been surpassed by other incentive policies, such as feed-in tariffs, which have proven to drive high levels of PV demand growth.

— Most Australian utilities remain hesitant to embrace power generated from solar PV facilities. Utilities across Australia have been slow to respond to increasing demand for solar PV systems, and many installations that were installed months ago are only now being connected to the electricity grid. Even as utilities have been slow to respond to customer requests for faster service for PV connection, many have been quick to blame rising retail electricity tariffs on increases in PV demand — even though updates to aging transmission and distribution grids are in fact the major factors in increasing costs.

Originally, the Solar Flagships program was meant to pave the way for more large-scale solar power development in Australia. Now, with not so much as one watt of the program installed, Australia has already reached that goal. In the PV sector there are several large-scale multi-megawatt projects under development, and one (a 10 MW project in Geraldton, Western Australia) scheduled to be completed in 4Q12. On the CSP side, a 44 MW project began construction in January 2012 and could be operating in as little as 12 months.

Ultimately, the Solar Flagships program will not really matter. The main reason is that long-term, due to a mix of positive economic and policy factors (such as the Renewable Energy Target and the Carbon Price Mechanism), the outlook for solar PV in Australia remains strong.

Packaging with 3-D architectures

Thu, 01 Mar 2012 06:00:00 GMT

Phil Garrou,
Microelectronic Consultants of NC

Research Triangle Institute's 3-D Architectures for Semiconductor Integration and Packaging Conference, or 3D ASIP (as it has become known) normally finishes off the "3D conference circuit" for the year and is a good gauge of how far things have progressed in the last 12 months. At the 7th 3D ASIP in Burlingame CA, there were several announcements, statements and rumors having significant impact on the 2.5/3D community.

Much of the "buzz" at this year's meeting certainly centered around the presentation by TSMC's Doug Yu, who made the case for the pure foundry model for 2.5 and 3DIC, stating that TSMC was readying full beginning-to-end interposer manufacturing. Yu said that sharing the fabrication process with OSATS was not the preferred option for TSMC because "the risk for the customer is too high" and therefore TSMC would "take full responsibility and accept full risk."

Since the profit margin for packaging and assembly is currently substantially less than that for a foundry like TSMC manufacturing chips, cost-sensitive customers appeared worried that packaging and assembly costs would increase substantially if turned over to foundries. Yu remained steadfast in his assessment that the required investments and the technology needed to handle thinned wafers would require that the foundries take control of such processing. "This is a new ballgame. The old ways of doing business are out of date for this new technology," Yu said.

When asked about the incorporation of other foundries' chips onto the interposer or chip stack, Yu said there is no need to go to other foundries/IDMs except for memory, and that TSMC would partner with one or more memory suppliers.

During my presentation detailing the status of 3DIC entering 2012, the issue of interposer categories came up. Basically interposers can be categorized as either being high density l/s ~ 1µm/1µm which could only be manufactured by CMOS fabs/foundries, and what we can call "coarse" featured interposers with l/s > 5µm/5µm. The latter could be fabricated by any of the OSATS who all have standard bumping and WLP processes capable of standard RDL. In a later presentation, Raj Pendse of STATSChipPAC indicated that 5µm l/s and sub 25µm TSV pitch was the transition point between OSAT and foundry capability.

While all the OSATS have such capability, products have not yet been announced that would use such coarse-dimensioned interposers and none of the OSATS have announced any intention to produce any interposers. One OSAT requesting anonymity later commented: "It is correct that we are not offering "coarse" interposers, although we have capability to produce them – this is because we don't see ourselves competing in that space with foundries and don't think it will be a viable business worth chasing."

Eric Beyne of imec also questioned whether coarse interposers would provide enough value to be integrated into products. Similar responses were received from other OSATS in attendance.

Lei Lei Zhang of NVIDIA made what could become the rallying cry of the upcoming 3D decade when she said: "Scaling is ending. Let's get over it and move our resources elsewhere." Zhang declared that for them bandwidth is the issue. She indicated that NVIDIA is likely to use a turnkey solution such as TSMC is offering with such 2.5D TSV solutions entering the NVIDIA roadmap with their TESLA and CUDA high end networking GPU product lines.

While Altera's Bradley Howe predicted that "there are 8-10 years left to scaling, and then 3D will be the solution," he was quick to show 2.5D prototypes they are readying for the market. With archrival Xilinx already sampling the market with 2.5D products, that's probably a good idea.

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LED Market Grew 9.8% To $12.5 Billion In 2011

Thu, 01 Mar 2012 06:00:00 GMT

The worldwide high-brightness LED market grew from $11.3 billion in 2010 to $12.5 billion in 2011, a growth rate of 9.8%, according to Strategies Unlimited, the leading market research firm in LEDs. Demand for LED components in the lighting market grew 44%, from $1.2 billion to $1.8 billion.

On the supply side, 10 companies accounted for more than 68% of the LED market. Strategies Unlimited arrived at these figures after analyzing market demand as well as the supply-side activity of more than 54 LED component suppliers. The rank order of the top 10 suppliers in the LED market for 2011, by revenue of packaged LED components, is:

1. Nichia

2. Samsung LED

3. Osram Optoelectronics

4. LG Innotek

5. Seoul Semiconductor

6. Cree*

6. Philips Lumileds*

8. Sharp

9 TG

10. Everlight

(*Companies have the same ranking when the difference in revenue is within the margin of error. Revenue includes packaged LED sales only.)

Geographically, Taiwanese and Chinese suppliers gained market share at the expense of the other regions. China's improvement in product quality, coupled with gains in the domestic market, fueled the growth from 2% market share to 6% in one year. Korean companies lost share in the slowing market, even though they were the most aggressive in increasing capacity during the ramp-up in 2010. Philips Lumileds, Cree, and Osram Optoelectronics' expansion into 6-inch substrates slowed as there was a great deal of excess capacity in their existing 4-inch lines. The Japanese LED business has trended down or flat. However, Nichia and TG are major beneficiaries of the boom in tablet computers. Osram Optoelectronics gained a major design win, which propelled its visible LED component business to more than $1 billion.—P.S.

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Thinfilm, PARC Win Award for Printed Addressable Memory

Thu, 01 Mar 2012 06:00:00 GMT

Thin Film Electronics ASA and PARC, a Xerox company, won the FlexTech Alliance Innovation Award for the world's first working prototype of a printed, non-volatile memory device addressed with complementary organic circuits, the equivalent of CMOS circuitry. The device consists of Thinfilm's printed memory and PARC's transistors, and when combined with other electronic components, such as temperature sensors, displays, power sources, and antennas, can enable the "Internet of Things", where everything is connected by a smart tag. The two companies first demonstrated the prototype in October of last year.

PARC notes that the market for flexible, printed, and organic large-area electronics is rapidly growing. Currently estimated at over $1B, the global market is expected to increase to a $45B market by 2016. The majority of this market growth will come from new markets enabled or disrupted by the use of flexible substrates, from opportunities enabled by low-cost printing of full-feature electronics, and from electronic devices integrated into novel systems or form factors.

"Addressable memory is a key building block for printed electronics and is an important step in creating a new world of integrated, smart devices. We are pleased to see FlexTech Alliance recognize its importance and innovation in driving the printed electronics market forward," said Ross Bringans, Vice President, PARC Electronic Materials and Devices Laboratory.

Thinfilm devices are thinner than traditional silicon devices and can be produced in form factors as slim as a strand of hair.

PARC's transistor technology using complementary pairs of n-type and p-type transistors to construct the circuits. The addition of the integrated circuits makes the roll-to-roll printed Thinfilm Memory addressable by printable logic.

Using printing to manufacture electronics minimizes the number of process steps, which in turn, dramatically reduces manufacturing costs and lowers the environmental impact compared to traditional semiconductor processes.

Janos Veres, area manager for printed electronics in the electronic materials and devices laboratory at PARC, described printed electronics as a relatively new field, with the "early years" being only 10-12 years ago. The focus is on materials that can be formulated as inks and deposited over large areas. This is quite useful for applications such as flexible displays, which was the original focus of the work, and more recently on smart cards and printed tags. Recent progress has printed electronic transistors inching closer to those produced in polysilicon.

"We never believed that they might one day compete with amorphous silicon," Veres notes. "That's happened and probably 4-5 years ago, we saw that barrier broken. That means we can now take organic materials and achieve the same kind of performance that you see in displays. That progress is carrying on and at the lab level, you can build devices that are now performing better than what amorphous silicon offers. The progress will not stop there. We might see a significant improvement in mobilities at which point devices we build might be competing with polysilicon."

This kind of progress could disrupt conventional microelectronics manufacturing. "A factory might look very different than the conventional microelectronics factory. It might look more like a printing press," he said. —P.S.

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MAPPER Lithography tech resolves 22nm

Thu, 01 Mar 2012 06:00:00 GMT

Research institute CEA-Leti shows "significant progress" with the MAPPER Lithography massively parallel direct write technology, resolving 22nm dense lines and spaces and 22nm dense contact holes in positive chemically amplified resist. The maskless lithography tech meets semiconductor industry requirements for 14nm and 10nm logic nodes.

The progress was reported in the 5th Operational Review of the IMAGINE program hosted by CEA-Leti this January. The industry/research multi-partner program includes leading semiconductor manufacturers TSMC and STMicroelectronics and suppliers like Nissan Chemical, TOK, Dow, JSR Micro, Synopsys, Mentor Graphics, Sokudo, Tel and Aselta. It was formed to evaluate a maskless lithography infrastructure, using multiple e-beam lithography from MAPPER.

CEA-Leti and Mapper will continue the IMAGINE program for 3 more years, through the installation of one of MAPPER's first pre-production maskless lithography Matrix systems at CEA-Leti. MAPPER's pre-alpha platform has been installed in CEA-Leti's cleanroom since mid-2009.

"In 2012, MAPPER will complete its Matrix pre-production platform," said Bert Jan Kampherbeek, MAPPER CEO, adding that the tool's initial 1 wafer per hour (WPH) throughput will be scaled up to 10 WPH. —M.C.

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The "maturing" of the industry

Thu, 01 Mar 2012 06:00:00 GMT

The semiconductor industry is big and getting bigger. Revenues were roughly $310 billion in 2011, including semiconductors (logic and microprocessors), LEDs and MEMS. This is expected to grow 6-10% in 2012. Most chipmakers are expected to spend about 15% of their revenue on capex, down from about 19% in previous years. In 2011, it was only 13.5%, coming in at $42 billion (including front-end and packaging equipment). The other part of the supply chain, the materials, represents a market approaching $45 billion (packaging materials alone is $23 billion). That's about $87 billion in yearly revenue for equipment and materials suppliers. So what's wrong with this picture?

The problem is that the semiconductor industry has "matured". At SEMI's ISS meeting, leaders of the biggest companies in the industry – Intel, Applied Materials and Lam Research -- were looking for inspiration from other industry that matured long ago, such as the airline industry and the automotive industry. Lam's Steve Newberry, for example, looked to the automotive industry for inspiration, particularly the relative efficiency of their R&D efforts brought about by cost-sharing between manufacturers and suppliers. Intel's Paolo Gargini spoke glowingly of the airline industry, noting that there were only two main manufacturers, served by only three engine suppliers. "They don't design the engines and hope they find a use for them," he said, noting the need for close collaboration. Mike Splinter, CEO of Applied Materials, spoke about consolidation as one of the "three Cs" of the industry, the other two being collaboration and coordination.

In order for the industry to move to 450mm wafers while also continuing to shrink dimensions to 10nm and below with new device structures and many new materials, a new level of collaboration and cost-sharing will be necessary, much as it is done in other "mature" industries. However, I don't see why consolidation is considered a good thing (although it's clearly happening). The competition that has for so long been such a wonderful source of innovation is gone, and manufacturers are placing their bets on one or two companies that may or may not deliver (EUV, anyone?).

The industry may soon get down to a handful of manufacturers, serviced by a select group of suppliers -- if it's not there already -- but I prefer to look at the exciting and still immature growth and emerging markets (GEMs) for inspiration. It is areas such as flexible electronics (see our lead news story) that could shake up the status quo.

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Evolution or revolution: the path for metrology beyond the 22nm node

Thu, 01 Mar 2012 06:00:00 GMT

Abraham Arceo, Benjamin Bunday, Aaron Cordes, and Victor Vartanian, SEMATECH, Albany, NY, USA

Metrology solutions are currently being investigated by SEMATECH to address the challenges of future nodes.

The 22nm node marks the beginning of a major transition from conventional scaling-driven planar devices to complex 3D transistor architectures, redefining future needs for lithographic, defect, and films metrology solutions for high volume manufacturing. Evaluation of critical dimension (CD), roughness, dopant distribution, and other parameters in FinFETs raises new metrology complexities, as the entire 3D structure becomes critical for process control, including fin and gate dimensions, profiles and roughness, and metal gate undercuts. Similarly, future 3D memory devices will include multiple gate-level structures defined by high aspect ratio (HAR) trenches and holes in multilayer stacks, which are major gaps in current metrology technology. No in-line non-destructive metrologies have achieved the sensitivity and resolution to image or measure CD, depth, profile, or contamination of such HAR features [1]. In addition, defect metrology inspection and review suffer from low sensitivity and inadequate throughput even for current 22nm defects of interest. To address these challenges, a robust metrology strategy should encompass the extendibility of conventional techniques that are approaching their fundamental limits, as well as development of new technologies.

FinFET metrology

Planar transistors are reaching their critical performance limitations due to undesirable short channel effects imposed by physical scaling. In 3-D FinFET or trigate devices, the gate surrounds the channel on multiple sides, resulting in higher drive current [1], better electrostatic control (lower off-state leakage), and lower supply voltage requirements than planar devices. To continue to scale with Moore's law, devices having 3D architectures will enter manufacturing in 2012 at the 22nm node.

Metrology demands for 3D structures and their more complex integration steps are considerably greater than for 2D devices. The ability to measure fin and gate dimensions accurately with good precision, and to detect subtle process changes for feedback or feed-forward control is essential to assure good device performance and high yield in high volume manufacturing (HVM). For example, variations in FinFET height (more of a concern on bulk Si substrates) can likewise lead to drive current variability. Sharp fin corners can affect threshold voltage [1], and gate dielectric undercutting can cause shorts between the gate and channel regions or Ion/Ioff variation. Fin line edge and width roughness, sidewall angle (SWA), profile, corner rounding, and gate dielectric undercutting are also critical process control variables. Some of the critical metrology steps entail critical dimension-scanning electron microscope (CD-SEM) measurements (resist and etch fin and gate CD and pitch; spacer width at the bottom; pre- and post-etch Hi-k/metal gate sidewall thickness on the fin; and sidewall line edge roughness). Additionally, scatterometry is required for fin height and gate profile, CD, and pitch (lithography and etch), buried oxide (BOX) recess under fin, gate height over fin after chemical mechanical polishing (CMP), high-k/metal gate thickness and taper on the fin and recess after gate etch, and spacer profile (Fig. 1).

Figure 1. Left: Cross-sectional diagram perpendicular to the fin showing the gate on the fin with spacer. Right:Diagram of a basic unit cell of a FinFET, demonstrating twelve important process control parameters.

Conventional metrology methods used in HVM, such as CD-SEM and optical scatterometry, may be challenged by the increased complexity of FinFETs. While CD-SEM demonstrates superior imaging capability, it has no sensitivity to fin height, layer recess, or SWA. Scatterometry is useful for FinFET metrology, but greater parameter correlation increases the measurement uncertainty, similar to increasing the number of variables in an equation. In Figure 1b, showing a diagram depicting a gate-on-fin structure, twelve parameters must be solved by the scatterometry software rather than only the five or six parameters typical for 2-D devices. One possible approach to improve the performance of metrology on complex structures is hybrid metrology, which combines the strengths of two or more metrology toolsets to provide a more comprehensive measurement of the same parameter than the individual techniques. Data obtained from one tool must be shared with another tool and used in a complementary or synergistic way to enhance the resolving power of both tools, thereby improving measurement uncertainty [2].

Several new metrology techniques are being explored at SEMATECH to improve measurement performance on FinFETs, including new technologies such as critical dimension small angle x-ray spectroscopy (CD-SAXS) [3]. The shorter wavelength (1.54Å for Cu Ka) for CD-SAXS and the lack of material dependence (no n and k sensitivities) allow measurements on smaller devices with less parameter correlation. Pitch and pitch variation can be obtained from major reflections and intensity decay with increasing order. The CD-SAXS envelope functions correlate to geometric form factors, and line width roughness (LWR)/line edge roughness (LER) information can be obtained from peak-broadening. Mueller matrix scatterometry [4] provides additional structural information associated with up to 16 spectral components compared to conventional scatterometry, which is important in measuring anisotropic 3D structures.

Dopant and carrier metrology for conventional planar devices has been performed primarily using secondary ion mass spectrometry (SIMS) and sheet resistance metrology on test pads. However, FinFET structures require novel ultra-shallow junction implant strategies because of shadowing effects on densely packed fins from conventional tilt implants. Metrology capable of measuring dopant and active carrier concentrations on vertical structures is needed, but currently poses a significant challenge. Three-dimensional atomic probe tomography (3D-APT) [5] combines field evaporation with time-of-flight mass spectrometry and a position-sensitive detector to provide atomic resolution imaging of the semiconductor device, including dopants. Similarly, scanning spreading resistance metrology (SSRM) is a candidate for active carrier metrology at nanometer spatial resolution. SSRM has demonstrated excellent performance in conjunction with 3D-APT and SIMS [6]. Transmission electron microscopy (TEM) techniques such as energy-dispersive X-ray (EDX) and electron energy-loss spectroscopy (EELS) are valuable in determining dopant concentration and distributions. As these implant metrology techniques are destructive, in some cases, it may be possible to create sacrificial test structures on selected die without affecting subsequent processing. Optically based implant metrology will also be more difficult on sidewalls and on structures having optically opaque layers.

3D memory metrology

Memory producers are migrating beyond planar designs to build multiple levels of gates into 3D structures. These vertical architectures lead to new challenges in semiconductor processing technology [7]. As shown in Fig. 2, the basic building blocks of these features are deep, high aspect ratio (HAR) trenches and holes in oxide, silicon, or multiple alternating layers of oxide and silicon.

Figure 2. Left: Diagram of pipe-shaped bit cost scalable (P-BiCS) flash memory cell, which consists of pipe-shaped NAND strings folded in a U shape [7]. This is an example of the types of 3D memory devices that will require HVM metrology. Right: Diagram of various measurement needs on such a structure.

3D memory structures present many metrology challenges due to their HAR characteristics. HAR contact holes and trenches at ITRS half-pitch dimensions are known gaps in CD and profile metrology; these same measurement limitations have, to some extent, already been apparent with etched contact holes and shallow trench isolation (STI) trenches in logic for recent ITRS nodes. Furthermore, the problem is increasing with shrinking dimensions. HAR etching is difficult, with 30:1, 40:1, or even 60:1 ARs necessary to form a vertical circuit path among stacked gates. Process control of the bottom of the CD, profile, and detection of polymeric etch residues is required for HVM. While TSVs may have a similar or higher AR, they are comparatively huge—3D memory device features will include hole and trench structures with bottom CD sizes at ITRS node dimensions [8], from 0.5 to 2 microns deep. This introduces an entirely new set of gaps in metrology capability as the quest for non-destructive measurements of such features has yet to achieve the necessary sensitivity and resolution. Moreover, the physics of these measurements is incompatible with the extremely deep and geometrically-confined volumes involved. Charged particle imaging techniques such as CD-SEM and helium ion microscopy (HeIM) [9] have sensitivity limitations arising from sidewall charging, as only a small fraction of scattered particles follow escape trajectories that reaches the detector. Also, many optical techniques, especially those that operate off-axis near the critical angle, suffer from a very small fraction of the interrogating light reaching the feature botto, and reflect upwards to the detector. Thus, in most cases, the various metrology techniques in their present forms will suffer low signal-to-noise ratios (SNRs) on such features.

Many technologies are being explored at SEMATECH to enable HVM of HAR features, including new technologies such as critical dimension small angle X-ray spectroscopy (CD-SAXS) [3], HeIM [9], and through focus scanning optical microscopy (TSOM) [10] and variations of existing technologies, such as Mueller matrix [2] and normal incidence scatterometry (polarized reflectometry), model-based infrared reflectometry (MBIR), high voltage SEM (HV-SEM) [11], environmental SEM (e-SEM) [12], and conventional low-voltage CD-SEM. Results are still forthcoming, but CD-SAXS and scatterometry at normal incidence, MBIR, and HV-SEM may have some capability in this application space. CD-SAXS is currently a lab technique, but X-ray sources with higher brightness offer possibilities for transforming this technique into a feasible HVM metrology tool. MBIR takes advantage of the transparency of the various applicable materials to infrared and thus may have sensitivity to some feature aspects. HV-SEM is being demonstrated as useful in providing the capability to charge HAR holes in such a way that reflected incident or secondary electrons can more easily escape the bottom of the feature. Normal incidence scatterometry may be feasible as more incident light can reach the bottom for potentially improved SNR.

Defect inspection and review

Future challenges for defect metrology go beyond merely extending the capability of current technologies to meet ITRS requirements [8]. In fact, in recent years the yield enhancement chapter has shown that the semiconductor industry consistently arrives at each new technology node without a long-term solution that combines defect sensitivity and throughput requirements at either development, ramp-up, or HVM phases[8]. The reason for this is that both defect inspection and review are approaching their fundamental limits, which cannot be easily circumvented with gradual improvements on workhorse toolsets [13]. In the specific case of inspection, optical simulations show that the defect contrast signal decays aggressively beyond the 22 nm node, and predict that DUV bright field tools are likely to lack useable signal at or beyond the 11 nm node. Further, it is also expected that wavelength scaling will not provide an acceptable solution, prompting the need to seek alternative technologies that rely on different contrast mechanisms that may bridge this gap. Examples of these include interferometric (phase shift signal) [14], near-field (sub-wavelength resolution), or fast probe microscopy [15]. This path-finding effort will have a steep learning curve in terms of the application space for these techniques and the engineering to translate them into manufacturing-worthy tools. An alternative path to achieve sub-11 nm inspection capability may be e-beam inspection. In this case, the challenge is not resolution but increasing the system throughput by several orders of magnitude, which will most likely require a breakthrough in e-beam column parallelization. Early efforts are currently driven by lithography needs, but could benefit the inspection application space [16].

Figure 3. There is a single defect in this 22nm-node SRAM array. Can you find it?

After defects are found (see Fig. 3 for an example), they must be identified and sourced to maintain yield, requiring increasing amounts of off-line lab analysis. As features shrink, the X-ray interaction volume used in EDX for in situ defect analysis (Fig. 4) is becoming larger than the sizes of critical defects. The only solution appears to be an explosive growth in the workload of the TEM characterization lab. The limitation to TEM is not capability but throughput. TEM requires extensive, time-consuming sample preparation. Moreover, the microscope itself is a complex device that traditionally requires hours of work by a highly skilled operator to obtain good results. The solution therefore is to focus on both problems. To this end, SEMATECH is working with leading suppliers to develop faster sample preparation techniques, by both optimizing existing technologies and testing novel methods such as plasma focused ion beam (FIB) and laser-based milling. SEMATECH is also working in cooperation with its strategic partners to develop higher speed TEM imaging capabilities. This includes testing the latest generation of high sensitivity and high throughput windowless detector systems and developing automated image setup and metrology on critical dimension scanning/tunneling (CD-S/TEM) systems.

Figure 4. Sample image of a high-speed EDX element map taken on a SEMATECH FinFET sample. Total collection time was 4 minutes.

Conclusion

As device technology transitions from traditional scaling to new architectures, new application needs are driving metrology towards evolutionary and revolutionary shifts in technologies and methodologies. Adaptation to new tool paradigms, enhancements of existing technologies, and productivity innovations will be critical to maintain process control and high yield in the coming technology generations. The SEMATECH Advanced Metrology Program is well positioned to develop solutions to address the measurement challenges of next generation devices.

References

Doyle, B. et al., "Tri-Gate Fully-Depleted CMOS Transistors: Fabrication, Design and Layout," Symposium on VLSl Technology Digest of Technical Papers, pp. 133-134 (2003).
Vaid, A., et al. "A holistic metrology approach: hybrid metrology utilizing scatterometry, CD-AFM, and CD-SEM." Metrology, Inspection, and Process Control for Microlithography XXV. Proceedings of the SPIE, Volume 7971, pp. 797103-797103-20 (2011).
Wang, C., Choi, K., Chen, Y. Price, J., Ho, D., Jones, R., Soles, C., Lin, E., Wu, W.L., Bunday, B. "Nonplanar high-k dielectric thickness measurements using CD-SAXS." Proc. SPIE, v. 7272, pp 72722M (2009).
De Martino, A., et al., "Comparison of Spectroscopic Mueller Polarimetry, Standard Scatterometry and Real Space Imaging Techniques (SEM and 3D-AFM) for Dimensional Characterization of Periodic Structures," Proc. of SPIE Vol. 6922, 69221P (2008).
Larson, D.J., and Kelly, T. F., "Nanoscale Analysis of Materials using a Local-Electrode Atom Probe," Microscopy and Microanalysis Volume: 20, Issue: 3, pp: 59-62 (2006).
Mody, J. et al., "Dopant and Carrier Profiling in FinFET-Based Devices with Sub-Nanometer Resolution," 2010 Symposium on VLSI Technology, pp. 155-156
R. Katsumata et al., "Pipe-shaped BiCS Flash Memory with 16 Stacked Layers and Multi-Level-Cell Operation for Ultra High Density Storage Devices," Symp. on VLSI Tech. Dig., pp136-137, 2009.
The International Technology Roadmap for Semiconductors (San Jose: Semiconductor Industry Association, 2010); available from the Internet: http://member.itrs.net.
Cohen-Tanugi, D. & Yao, N. "Superior imaging resolution in scanning helium-ion microscopy: A look at beam-sample interactions," J. Applied Physics, v. 104, 063504 (2008).
Attota, R., Dixson, R.G., Kramar, J.A., Potzick, J.E., Vladár, A.E., Bunday, B., Novak, E., Rudack, A., "TSOM Method for Semiconductor Metrology," Proc. of SPIE Vol. 7971, 79710T (2011).
Bishop, M. & Joy, D. C. "Feasibility Study for High Energy SEM-Based Reference Measurement System for Litho Metrology," AIP Conf Proc, v. 788, pp. 407-410 (2005).
Diebold, A. C. & Joy, D. C. "A critical analysis of techniques and future CD metrology needs," Solid State Technol. 46, 63 (2003). Available online at http://www.electroiq.com/articles/sst/print/volume-46/issue-7/features/metrology/a-critical-analysis-of-techniques-and-future-cd-metrology-needs.html
Crimmins, T. "Defect Metrology Challenges at the 11 nm node and beyond". Proc. of SPIE Vol. 7638, 7630H—1 (2010).
Kim, M.K., "Principles and Techniques of Digital Holographic Microscopy". SPIE Reviews Vol. 1, 018005-1 (2010).
Kohli, P. et al., "High Speed Atmospheric Imaging of Semiconductor Wafers using Rapid Probe Microscopy'. Proc. of SPIE Vol. 7971, 797119-2 (2011).
Slodowski, M. et al. Multi-Shaped-Beam (MSB): An Evolutionary Approach for High Throughput E-beam Lithography". Proc. of SPIE Vol. 7823, 78231J-1 (2010).

ABRAHAM ARCEO is a Metrology Development engineer at SEMATECH Advanced Metrology group. For the past three years he has been involved in film and defect inspection metrology development. BENJAMIN BUNDAY is the Project Manager of CD Metrology and a Senior Member Technical Staff at SEMATECH (Albany, NY, USA). For ten years he has led SEMATECH/ISMI's CD-SEM and OCD benchmarking, advanced CD technology evaluation and development efforts, and SEMATECH's Advanced CD Metrology Advisory Group (AMAG). AARON CORDES is a research engineer for Sematech in Albany doing work on AFM, TEM, and focused ion beam metrology. He is also a PhD student with SUNY Albany's College of Nanoscale Science and Engineering. VICTOR VARTANIAN is a metrology engineer at SEMATECH in Albany, New York. Before coming to SEMATECH, he worked at Freescale Semiconductor in Austin, Texas, where he worked on applications of strained silicon to advanced transistor design and analytical applications of FTIR and mass spectrometry to environmental issues in semiconductor manufacturing and in process optimization.

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It's 2012: Time to get serious about 450mm?

Thu, 01 Mar 2012 06:00:00 GMT

Bob Johnson,
Research Vice President,
Semiconductor Manufacturing,
Gartner

The effort to actively engage equipment companies in the serious development of tools for 450mm wafers got a major boost last fall with the formal announcement of the investment of serious money by four major semiconductor manufacturers and the state of New York aimed at 450mm development at the Albany Nanotech facility in upstate New York. The $4.4B effort, which includes R&D work, will be funded by contributions from Intel, Samsung, TSMC, Globalfoundries, IBM and the State of New York.

Prior to the announcement of this new facility, 450mm development efforts had been bumping along at a slow pace that might see a production ready fab by the end of the next decade. The new facility indicates that the major semiconductor companies who had been the driving force for 450mm development realized that they would have to do something to kick the pace of development into high gear if they were going to see a production fab before 2020. The location of the new facility is significant. Albany NanoTech has already been well established as a successful cooperative R&D consortium where equipment companies and semiconductor manufacturers are able to work together to develop advanced processes while maintaining the necessary protections of intellectual property. Building on the existing levels of cooperation has the potential to dramatically reduce the costs of 450mm development to the point where a reasonable payback of R&D investment is possible.

But what this facility represents is a very necessary step in the initial concept and feasibility studies to determine if 450mm has a chance of achieving its very ambitious cost goals. It does not guarantee that these goals will be met, or that the very real engineering challenges can be overcome to the degree necessary for implementation in volume production. And the challenges are significant.

The biggest challenge is whether lithography can meet the cost targets necessary to achieve the stated goal of a 25-30% reduction in the cost to manufacture silicon compared to 300mm. So far ASML has not made a commitment to development 450mm tools – they are currently focusing all their efforts onto getting EUV production worthy on 300mm. To further complicate matters, 450mm production will require both EUV and 193 immersion tools, with significant engineering resources needed for each.

Gartner projects that if everything works right, the first production 450mm fabs will appear around 2019 – as the industry is moving to the sub 10nm feature size for leading edge production. This raises an interesting question: with the challenges of implementing sub 10nm production, will semiconductor manufacturers be willing to risk it all on untried 450mm tools, or will they demand parallel process developments on 300mm to hedge their bets? In addition, how long will conventional silicon processes developed for sub 10nm production continue before silicon hits its limit? Will this be sufficient to guarantee a reasonable rate of return on equipment R&D investments?

And finally there is the question of exactly how many 450mm fabs will be built? Already only a handful of semiconductor companies are building new fabs, and the list will likely get smaller, not larger. Will this be sufficient to justify 450mm development costs?

There are still lots of questions which need to be answered and engineering problems which need to be solved, but the increased collaborative efforts at Albany NanoTech indicate that the industry is getting serious about trying to find answers.

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Yield challenges and the 450mm learning curve

Thu, 01 Mar 2012 06:00:00 GMT

Brian Trafas,
chief marketing officer at KLA-Tencor, Inc.

As the industry evolves to meet consumers' increasing demand for smaller, faster and cheaper devices, chipmakers are growing more focused on the wafer size transition from 300mm to 450mm.

The transition to 450mm wafers are intended to combat the rising costs of manufacturing next-generation design nodes by increasing chipmakers' overall yield. The increased die each wafer yields from 450mm wafers will improve costs and increase fab output while offering significant environmental benefits as increased productivity will lead to reduced energy, water and emissions from fewer facilities.

The move toward 450mm is underway with early support from industry heavyweights. In fact, the Global 450 Consortium that formed late last year marked a critical turning point as the world's leading international chipmakers announced a collaboration to develop and deploy 450mm wafer process tools and capabilities. Several equipment companies have already begun to build 450mm-capable tools and have encouraged industry-wide collaboration to support a smooth transition.

While 450mm will eventually lower die costs for manufacturers, it will not happen without higher die yields. In addition to the yield challenges resulting from the processing of advanced design rules; the manufacturing of 450mm wafers will bring significant yield challenges. Increased chip density, new, immature process tools, tighter process windows, center-to-edge process variations and wafer edge defects all present significant challenges to obtaining the necessary yields for success. Industry focus will be heavily centered on ensuring a fast yield ramp with particular emphasis on edge-die defectivity and quickly understanding their process variation windows for a particular process. The 450mm learning curve will indeed be steep with process control playing a critical role in helping wafer suppliers, OEMs and IC manufacturers develop their initial tools and production processes, ensuring they have the right capabilities when they move into production. Many of the yield challenges the industry saw during the transition to 300mm will reappear. Due to the increased value of a 450mm wafer, yield and process variation concerns will also become all the more critical.

A larger wafer with increased chip density per wafer, center-to-edge variations, tighter process windows, and initially more defects can mean higher cost per wafer. Industry focus will be heavily centered on ensuring yield at the 450mm level, with particular emphasis on edge-die defectivity and improving process uniformity understanding.

Addressing process control issues across larger substrates will be particularly critical for equipment companies as it is yet unclear what the technology node will be when 450mm goes into production. Looking towards the 2018-2019 timeframe, the industry will be well into production at technology nodes smaller than 1X nanometer, furthering industry concern around the right time to move forward with significant R&D investment in 450mm production.

Given these challenges, continued collaboration between chipmakers and equipment suppliers, close partnering and early learning will be the driving forces behind a successful transition to 450mm manufacturing. As the industry addresses the challenges posed by a period of complex scaling, tighter collaboration is essential to surpass the numerous hurdles, while containing R&D costs, resources and maximizing the industry's financial investment.

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First Solar's 4Q11 takeaways: Warranty woes, and a radical idea

Wed, 29 Feb 2012 20:18:00 GMT

February 29, 2012 - First Solar's (FSLR) fiscal 4Q11 and 2011 results came with a couple of unexpected surprises -- including a big nasty one related to performance issues -- and industry watchers are raising their voices calling for what could be a radical shift in the company's business.

Here's a bullet-point summary of FSLR's fiscal 4Q11 and full-year 2011:

Revenues: $660.4 million (-34 percent Q/Q, +8 percent Y/Y). The Q/Q loss was blamed primarily on timing of revenue recognition on the systems business and softer module sales.
Gross margins: 20.9 percent (was 37.7 percent in 3Q11, 48.7 percent in 4Q10)
Net loss: $413.1 million (vs. profits of $196.5 million in 3Q11 and $155.9 million in 4Q10), EPS (-4.78). (Barrons makes the unfortunate but accurate observation that FSLR's 4Q11 losses equal 20 percent of the company's market value.)
"Core" cost/watt lowered to $0.71 (including $0.01 for warranty costs), the first stepdown in more year after being stagnant at $0.73. Total cost/W produced inched down a point to $0.73.
Conversion efficiency raised to 12.2 percent, up from 11.8 percent.
Megawatts (MW) produced dipped 2 percent to 539.7 MW.
For full-year fiscal 2011, FSLR reported revenues of $2.8 billion and a net loss (EPS) of ($0.46).

Included in the 4Q11 net loss was $485.3 million in charges that were announced in the December quarter. Within that was a big surprise: nearly $164 million in warranty-related charges for replacement modules remediation/compensation to customers. That one-percentage-point increase (going back to a 2008-2009 excursion) attempts to compensate for increased failure rates foreseen for hotter climates that the company is targeting, noted CFO Mark Widmar. (More on that below...)

Here's what FSLR is now guiding for 2012 (vs. early-December expectations in parentheses):

Revenues revised downward: $3.5 billion to $3.8 billion (vs. $3.7 billion to $4.0 billion), and operating cash flow down to $800 million to $900 million (was $900 million to $1.1 billion)
Reiterated with no change: Operating income $425 million to $450 million; earnings per share (EPS) $3.75-$4.25; and capex $375 million to $425 million.
Reiterated 2012 installations: 1.2 gigawatts (GW) DC installed, with 95 percent under contract, though only 300 to 500 MW DC in modules (down from 720 MW DC forecast).
Production outlooks lowered: 1.5 to 1.8 GW (from 2.0 GW), and 60 to 70 percent utilization (from 80 percent).
Average module costs $0.74, up from $0.72, including $0.07 impact of underutilization.
Average module efficiency raised a point to 12.7 percent.

The company had been expected to reveal more details about how it plans to shift away from today's major subsidized markets (what it called a frustrating "whack-a-mole" game) and focus more on stable, emerging markets unencumbered by the volatility of subsidization. FSLR now says those details will be forthcoming in the next couple of months.

Among the things it did reveal about 2012, however, was that it's idling four lines in its German plant "for up to six months," and it will stick to its earlier plan to postpone its Mesa, Ariz., facility and "discontinue work" on its proposed plant in Vietnam. Asked during the results conference call why the company doesn't just shut down manufacturing capacity outright vs. temporary idling, Widmar said it "makes the most sense" given current market expectations, though he kept that as a possibility should visibility or market recovery erode getting closer to 2013.

Considering the flux in Germany's solar market, chairman/interim CEO Michael Ahearn was asked about the US utility-scale market, and admitted that it's "not nonexistent but sporadic and not at particularly high levels for the next several years."

Analysts' take: Mostly bad with some good

Jesse Pichel with Jefferies called it "a near-kitchen-sink quarter" encompassing lots of bad news of missed estimates and some lowered key forecasts, though improvements on the balance-of-systems side are encouraging. (Satya Kumar with Credit Suisse, though, thinks the system EPS guidance "was too conservative to begin with.")

Tim Arcuri respectfully calls the results "better than [they] could have been," pointing to the company's ability to maintain EPS guidance and reduce core balance-of-system costs even as revenues are seen falling (blaming Germany).

Maxim's Aaron Chew takes issue (once again) with FSLR's liquidity, which dropped from $184 million to $124 million in 4Q11, as "an overlooked risk" and "an overarching concern." Given the anemic module business, the company might resort to acquiring projects outside its own pipeline, he suggests. "Our bias has shifted to the downside," he said, saying the company's future "lies in utility-scale development not module sales."

And on the far bearish end (where it's been for a while), Cantor Fitzgerald called the results "awful" and said it has "no confidence in the company's forward guidance" — and warns that "2013 will be worse than 2012."

Performance problems looming

Those warranty issues — amounting to overall cumulative charges of $253 million — are a very big deal. Avian Securities analyst Mark Bachman, quoted by Barrons, points out those charges are "about 10 times what they said they were going to be when they first reported the issue."

Credit Suisse analyst Satya Kumar goes even further, hammering home the importance of product quality as "the most significant metric" for solar panels, "and doubly so for thin-film panels" whose 20-year performance track record lags behind crystalline silicon (c-Si) panels. Field reliability of thin-film panels is less proven, and high temperature degradation of cadmium-telluride (CdTe) panels is known and understood (he cites an NREL study). It's the most important metric for a company's long-term survivability, he writes.

Kumar worries that "this may not be the last time we hear of the warranty related issues" for FSLR, and points out that SunPower's panels have lower thermal degradation (due to use of n-type silicon), while degradation for P-type silicon used commonly in c-Si panels is "probably lower than thin-film" as well.

Time for a radical idea?

During the results call, Ahearn underscored what the company sees as its value proposition: designing and building solar PV systems, with an advantage partly from its own modules but also through doing installation directly including turnkey systems. "We're seeing this as a holistic offering," he said.

But analysts increasingly aren't seeing it that way. Arcuri takes a jab at the company's "captive lifeline — er, we mean pipeline — [which] continues to mask massive losses in its core merchant module business." He also interestingly notes that FSLR's projected 400 MW module sales for 2012 is less than CIGS player Solar Frontier.

Assuming FSLR's lower-cost benefits don't greatly outweigh efficiency performance benefits (and its ballooning reputation problem with warranty issues), maybe it's time for a radical proposal: FSLR should "become more technology 'agnostic' and open up the possibility to use c-Si or even CIGS products in its captive development business," Arcuri suggests. The company "now admits that selling CdTe modules as components is no longer the company strategy, and certainly not profitable," adds Pichel.

FSLR isn't quite ready to make that leap just yet, though, explained Ahearn during the call:

"Our modules cost less and perform better than crystalline silicon, so it wouldn't make any sense for us to use crystalline silicon modules. I mean, a significant part of our competitive advantage is in our manufacturing costs, and where we intend to be 3 years from now would be substantially below even the cash costs of a silicon module to our best estimate. So that really wouldn't be part of our game plan. The ability to integrate modules into an engineered system that optimizes all-in performance is something a module manufacturer like us is uniquely capable of doing. And to be able to wrap that with a data set and a monitoring capability and provide assurance to a utility that the manufacturer stands behind the entire result, that's pretty significant. And I don't see us ever being able to do that with some third-party product."

Nor is FSLR eager to go beyond constructing solar PV projects to actually running them, even though owning solar projects is proving to be where the money is (and not in selling modules). "We're not currently thinking that we would actually own and operate the assets," said Ahearn, but "we might be interested in doing [that], if not directly, with a partner on a given market."

Surprise: Chinese suppliers dominate solar PV module rankings

Tue, 28 Feb 2012 21:59:00 GMT

February 28, 2012 - Try not to act surprised that the familiar Chinese suppliers still sit atop the list of solar PV module shipments in 2011, though one is making a stronger push to keep up with the others.

Suntech kept its top rank, which it snatched from First Solar in 2010, back when Chinese suppliers were still making a name for themselves. (Since 2Q11 the Suntech-Yingli-Trina triumverate has owned these rankings; today, only one non-Chinese manufacturer is in the top 5.) Suntech supplied more than 2 gigawatts of modules in 2011, an industry first, and eight of the 10 largest suppliers grew shipments by 10 percent or more. Most, however, saw a slowdown during 4Q11 (notable exceptions were Canadian Solar and Trina), despite a surge in Germany because of high inventory levels. Jinko also stands out with its eye-popping rise up the charts, more than doubling shipments during the year.

"2011 claimed a number of victims, but nearly all of the top-10 suppliers grew their shipments and collectively they accounted for nearly half of total industry shipments," noted IMS Research senior market analyst Sam Wilkinson.

PV module supplier rankings, by MW shipments. Does not include
module processing services or OEM shipments. (Source: IMS Research)

Chinese solar financials show ups and downs in 4Q11-1Q12

Tue, 28 Feb 2012 18:03:00 GMT

February 28, 2012 - The latest quarterly financial updates now coming in provide a clearer view of the solar PV supplier landscape, who's doing better and why (or why not). Here's what the top Chinese PV module suppliers are saying, and what the analysts are taking away.

JA Solar

Final numbers won't be ready until mid-March, but JA Solar says shipments in 4Q11 were around 390-410MW, far higher than its previous guidance of 310-330MW. That will put shipments for all of 2011 at 1.68-1.70GW, vs. expectations of 1.6GW.

Analysts' take: What analysts seem to be picking up from JASO's update is the lack of any clarity on sales and particularly margins. Jesse Pichel from Jefferies calls it "another profitless prosperity" and lowers his gross margin expectations on the basis of pricing pressures and anticipating some inventory writedowns as its peers have been doing. The 80MW upside in 4Q11 shipments, he says, is mainly from projects in the US and China, with some upside from Germany.

Aaron Chew of Maxim doesn't cover JASO, but agrees that the story is more about margins and profits rather than hiking shipments. "It shouldn't be lost that Suntech, Yingli, Canadian Solar, and generally anyone with guidance talks to margins, not just shipments," he says. Both Pichel and Chew calculate next-to-nothing profitability or even a loss for the company.

Suntech Power

4Q11 shipments were better than thought: just a -10 percent decrease sequentially instead of -20 percent, pushing full-year shipments above expectations to 2.09GW (vs. 2GW). Revenues are expected to be $610M-$630M ($3.13B-$3.15B for the full year), with gross margins of 9%-11%. The company also brightened its balance sheet, reducing accounts receivable and inventory by $450M (offset by a $85M in accounts payable), reducing net debt by $200M, and boosting cash and restricted cash by $567M.

Analysts' take: "Overall, this report highlights the limited impact of better utilization on margins for these companies and highlights that it is all about input costs," writes Citi's Tim Arcuri, pointing out that sinking polysilicon prices will "have much less favorable impact on margins moving forward." He also gets the M&A drumbeat going: " Fundamentally, we still see very little if any sustainable earnings power here and more financing is clearly necessary but we do believe STP's global sales force is a huge asset and very attractive for a potential acquirer."

Jesse Pichel from Jefferies applauds STP's reduction of working capital, and slashing inventory and AR to 30 percent of 3Q11 levels.

Both Pichel and Maxim's Aaron Chew note that STP's price premium vs. Chinese peers Trina and Yingli is more than offset by production costs, and with expected 9 percent-11 percent margins implying roughly a -$0.18 EPS loss, Chew writes, "we do not believe inventory draw-downs and A/R collections represent a sustainable source of cash flow."

Yingli Green Energy

Yingli Green Energy said it now expects a slightly bigger sequential decline in 4Q11 PV module shipments than previously thought (-30 percent, instead of "middle twenties" percent), though guidance for full-year 2011 shipments is unchanged at 1580-1630 megawatts. A bigger update is in Yingli's gross margins: now seen at 3 percent in 4Q11, vs. 10 percent expectations, suffering from a noncash inventory provision (without which margins would have been 12 percent). The biggest news: Yingli is bracing for some big charges and writedowns: $361 million impairment of assets and $43 million in goodwill for its Fine Silicon in-house polysilicon unit, and a $135 million provision for inventory purchases under long-term polysilicon supply contracts, which it is trying to renegotiate.

Analysts' take: While peers (Suntech, Canadian Solar, Trina) are raising their shipment guidance, Yingli is actually lowering its 4Q numbers, but that's probably because its 3Q11 was stronger, explains Maxim's Aaron Chew -- and maybe also because it was less aggressive than other Chinese suppliers in recognizing revenue ahead of possible US tariffs, agreed Jesse Pichel from Jefferies. (Citi's Tim Arcuri pointed out that Yingli "continues to be very aggressive w/shipments and volume in China as it solidifies its brand in the region.") The upside for Yingli is that 1Q12 and beyond will probably look rosier: the big inventory writedown hurting 4Q11 margins will make 1Q12 look better. And the nearly $500 million in polysilicon charges will ultimately be a good thing, removing a "poly[silicon] overhang" that will drop the company's cost/W and improve margins even more. Arcuri, though, feels that "more writedowns are necessary."

Trina Solar

4Q11 revenues outpaced expectations by $80M (to $435M), but losses more than doubled from the prior quarter (profits were $145M in 4Q10). Margins were 7 percent in 4Q, but the company expects margins in the "low teens" in 1Q12 after renegotiating silicon supply deals. Full-year 2011 revenues were up 10 percent to $2.05B, with a $37.8M loss vs. a $311M profit in 2010. The company shipped 1.51GW of solar PV modules in 2011, slightly more than expected (vs. a little over 1GW in 2010), and foresees up to 2.1GW shipments in 2012. The company also expects to hike production capacity by more than 25 percent to 2.4GW in the first half of this year.

Analysts' take: Like most of its peers, Trina reported better shipments and revenues for 4Q11 but also softer margins (mainly due to ASP declines), and the 1Q12 outlook is brighter than analysts' estimates. The 500MW-expansion in 1H12 for the company's multicrystalline-based 'Honey' technology-based module, which is ahead of schedule, provides "volume upside in 2012," note Jefferies' Jesse Pichel and Citi's Tim Arcuri. Maxim Group analyst Aaron Chew, though, calculates the company at $400M sales in 1Q12 (shipments of 400-430MW, at $0.95/W module ASP), but with costs outpacing cost/W ($0.63/W processing, $37/kg poly-Si, $0.42/W wafers) he expects an EPS loss of ($0.28) to ($0.30).

Canadian Solar

Canadian Solar won't report official 4Q11 results until March 7, but has upped its guidance for 4Q11 shipments to 430-440MW, vs. initial 340-360MW expectations, and compared to 355MW and 287MW in 3Q11 and 2Q11, respectively. Gross margins will be in line with previous guidance at 5%-8%. For the entire year, shipments are projected at roughly 1.3GW, at the high end of previous 1.2-1.3GW guidance.

Analysts' take: Shipment strength really stood out, coming from all customer segments and markets, both to installers and its own expanding project business. Like peers, CSIQ margins were dented by lousy pricing; "even tier one companies will lose money near term," notes Jefferies' Jesse Pichel. He also noted concerns that polysilicon prices are still soft and hovering at $22/kg, and that some projects dependent upon the Section 1603 cash grant are at risk of not getting done.

Germany's new solar containment policy

Mon, 27 Feb 2012 20:44:00 GMT

February 27, 2012 - Germany has been for two decades a global leader in renewable energy, first creating Feed-in Tariff (FiT) laws in 1991, then in 2000 via the Renewable Energy Sources Act (EEG) establishing different FiTs for different renewables.

Since 2007 the nation has accounted for 30-50% of the planet's annual solar PV capacity. Cumulative installed solar capacity is roughly 25 gigawatts (GW) and the government is targeting 66GW by 2030. To avoid overheating as seen in other European nations (Spain in 2008 and 2009 and Italy in 2010 and 2011), Germany has reigned in its FiT plans by nearly 40%. The EEG, which costs about €7 billion a year, is structured to degress as installations climb, thus maintaining steady internal rates of return (IRR) for projects, and generally keeping pace with plunging PV costs.

In the first few weeks of 2012, though, German officials realized they had a big problem: preliminary estimates indicated new solar PV installations in 2011 leaped to a record 7.5GW in 2011, far outpacing the country's 2.5 to 3.5GW plans -- with a whopping 3GW in December 2011 alone, thanks to mild weather and desires to get installs done before the next scheduled FiT reductions in January.

Continued half-year adjustment of the subsidies, now scheduled for a 15% degression to about 24 €-cents/kWh given the 2011 surge, would no longer be enough. New policies were immediately proposed: more frequent step-down degressions in the existing FiT were preferred by Environmental Minister Norbert Röttgen, and some kind of hard cap on annual installations, as low as 1GW annually or even lower, was proposed by Federal Minister of Economics Philipp Rösler. Industry watchers speculated on what would come out of negotiations, guessing on monthly or quarterly FiT reductions or a less-restrictive hard cap.

On Feb. 23, Röttgen and Rösler announced their framework of a compromise -- and it was more severe, and takes effect much sooner, than anyone anticipated.

Reactions to the new rules

The newly proposed subsidies cut the FiT levels by up to 30%, limit the payback on electricity produced, and eliminate a self-consumption bonus. They also take effect on Jan. 2013 but apply to everything installed by March 9, not April 1 as many had thought. (The previous FiT structure would have cut the levels by another 15% in July.)

Germany's new FiT plan

-- Starting in May, the FiTs will be reduced monthly by 0.15 €-cents/kWh for all new systems.
-- New small systems will be remunerated for 85% of the electricity produced; medium- and large-sized systems will get back 90%.
-- A bonus for self-consumption will be eliminated.
-- Yearly installations from 2014-2017 will see a 400-MW annual reduction in the current corridor of 2.5 to 3.5GW; the new corridor from 2017 on will be 900 MW to 1.9GW.

Not surprisingly, the German solar market is up in arms about the changes, which are the most severe since the government's support began in 2004.

"This decision sends exactly the wrong message about renewables at a critical time for the industry and for EU efforts to achieve its energy goals," said Ingmar Wilhelm, president of the European Photovoltaic Industry Association (EPIA), in a statement to PV World. "No one believes that PV support schemes should last still for long, and everyone knows that they need to be smart, sustainable and properly adapted to changing market conditions."

"The breathing cap worked, and would have further slowed down the market after the lack of growth between 2010 and 2011," agreed Markus Lohr, chief-analyst of EuPD Research. "Market instruments require time in order to come into effect; there was no real need to intervene in the market again."

The strategy of accelerating reductions in Germany's solar support schemes have greatly narrowed the gap between PV and conventional electricity sources, Wilhelm argues, but the new rules "create an increasingly unpredictable regulatory climate containing impossible conditions which put the entire PV industry at risk." Narrowing the government's options to support solar, and more broadly its "Energiewende" energy transformation effort, "will only provide one result: ever higher costs for the entire energy system."

Hours before the new FiT proposals were announced, the Bundesverband Solarwirtschaft (BSW), Germany's Solar Industry Association ~~utility and infrastructure regulatory agency~~, organized a protest attended by roughly 50 domestic solar companies and thousands of workers against what were assumed to be tightened restrictions. S.A.G. Solarstrom AG, a solar PV plant designer and builder taking part in the protests, accused the government of "completely choking the German market" and jeopardizing jobs in Germany.

"It is completely incomprehensible to us how the federal government can argue these drastic reductions," said SAG CEO Karl Kuhlmann. "These short-term drastic reductions are slowing down the very positive development of photovoltaics that we have had up to now." German electricity suppliers are hiking prices by more than 3%, he says, far out of balance with any EEG-related increases: "Photovoltaics is being made a scapegoat by the energy corporations in order to expand their own profit margin without any risks."

Protesters in front of the Federal Economics Ministry in Berlin on Feb. 22, prior to the Feed-in Tariff announcement. (Source: BSW-Solar)

Industry watchers both inside and outside Germany are concerned about what the harsher and sooner FiT adjustments will do to solar project economics and end-demand.

"Overall we believe it is still bad news for the German solar industry," likely reducing IRRs from high single-digits "to low single digit at best (and in most cases non-existent), which will reduce demand dramatically," writes Citi analyst Tim Arcuri. "Given that Germany was greater than 30% of global demand last year with 7.5GW installed, a dramatic slowdown in Germany, and at such short notice will we believe be negative for pricing across the solar value chain in an industry already suffering from overcapacity."

Maxim Group analyst Aaron Chew agrees: "It's hard to get projects going when the economics change every 30 days." The whole model is based on cash flow, and any delays under a monthly-adjusted FiT system "changes the whole equation" for everyone from financers to suppliers to EPC firms.

Vishal Shah from Deutsche Bank echoes that the new FiT structure "increases the risk of significantly reducing the installation run-rate in Germany [...] Our checks indicate that German distributors could start cancelling orders immediately, in order to work down inventory."

The new FiT plan still has to be officially ratified, first and probably quickly by the Bundestag (lower house), and then it goes to the Bundesrat (upper house) where some individual states are likely to push back for changes. Both IHS iSuppli analyst Henning Wicht and Deutsche Bank's Shah acknowledge that once the upper house, where states' interests are more prevalent, takes a crack at it, the final law that gets passed and enacted could be somewhat less harsh than what is currently proposed. Unfortunately, that would add even more delays to the process and cause more uncertainty among suppliers, project developers, and end-users, and that might even be worse: "It's better to know what's happening even if it's bad," Wicht says.

Moving forward

It's important to remember the bigger picture for solar energy, and all renewables: the end-goal of "grid parity," a level playing field with conventional oil/gas energy sources. In that context, the true big-picture in Germany's current solar subsidy scuffle is that it represents the future of a post-incentive solar PV market. "We really need to take a step back from FiTs and get into the electricity market," Wicht notes. "The end market is where PV has to compete." Chew agrees: Germany needs to "transform to a pure grid-parity model, and rely on low solar system costs to generate returns."

And that starts by getting as many costs as possible out of solar systems to begin with. "System prices for large installations are around 1500-1600 Euros, but they have to drop further," at least 10% if not more, Wicht says. Solar PV module prices have plunged over the past couple of years, but costs can be squeezed from other areas of the supply chain, particularly on the balance-of-systems (BoS) side.

"There is a lot of potential to reduce BoS costs, from mounting systems to inverters," Wicht points out. He cited one power park in Germany that redesigned its mounting systems under construction (which typically use stainless steel or aluminum) and trimmed mounting costs by 50%. Such efforts will take time, though, and given the rapidity of the new FiT changes, sourcing lower-cost modules will probably be the preferred method among the solar supply chain.

Another problem to be overcome is that renewable energy sources don't fit neatly into the best interests of utilities. "If Germany continues to build up PV capacities at the current speed, these capacities will seriously conflict with conventional power plants regarding grid capacity," explains Solarbuzz analyst Susanne von Aichberger. Wicht has a different angle on utilities' motives: "Solar cuts into the profit margins of electricity utility suppliers," meaning noon and peak-times, and decentralized production and consumption of electricity doesn't rely on a grid fee, he says. "That really disturbs the business case of utilities."

On the other hand, the vocally supports "continued robust expansion" of domestic solar power as "essential" to Germany's energy system, and points out that solar "enjoys broad support from the population at large." Solar contributes 4% of its total electric power and is expected to rise to 7% within five years and 10% by 2020. Critics lament the imbalance between the subsidies and solar's contribution to the grid, but PV's power production generally lines up with the heaviest periods of electricity demand; it is the dominant electricity source in some regions on sunny noontimes.

A PV system on the association headquarters of BSW-Solar. (Source: BSW-Solar/Upmann)

A study by the Institute for Future Energy Systems, commissioned by the BSW, shows that solar power reduces average trading prices on the European Power Exchange (EPEX) by an average of 10% per day, and by as much as 40% at midday. That added up to savings of €520-€840 million in 2011, corresponding to lowering prices by €4-6/MWh. The BSW also cites data from Prognos showing that expanding solar capacity by 70% through 2016, to 7% of total electricity mix, would only add 2% to electricity prices.

Germany's consumers clearly still want renewable energy options. The BSW cites studies indicating a vast majority of Germans (91%) think solar power is important, with 40% believing that support was strengthened as a result of the nuclear disaster in Fukushima last spring. The figures from pollster firm TNS Emnid also indicate 69% of respondents think the solar energy policy is not expanding too quickly, and 60% also feel current policies do too little.

Wicht believes Germany will eventually get to a 100% renewable-sourced electricity supply, faster than anyone expects -- not 20-30 years, but maybe just 10 years, he says. Wind power is still a big business, and where wind adoption faces challenges (longer permitting phases, not viable for cities or villages, and grid connection/maintenance for offshore installs), PV solar is better positioned. Meeting that rapid adoption pace will also require improved and enough energy storage to help offset renewables' Achilles heel of intermittency.

First thing's first, though. Once Germany adopts the new solar FiT changes and its solar industry participants end their handwringing, "we'll see another wave of PV market dynamics," promises Wicht. And from there it's on to bigger aims of substituting entire energy parks, and keeping Germany as a greener, cleaner global energy leader.

China's solar master plan sets goals for production, efficiency, pricing

Fri, 24 Feb 2012 20:52:00 GMT

by Ucilia Wang, contributor, RenewableEnergyWorld.com

February 24, 2012 - China has made it clear that it wants to add solar energy generation at a fast pace, so it's not surprising that the government also has big plans to boost solar manufacturing. In fact, China's Ministry of Industry and Information Technology posted a plan Friday that calls for certain polysilicon producers to reach 50,000 tons of annual production capacity by 2015; it also wants solar cell makers to reach 5 gigawatts of annual capacity by the same time frame.

The plan doesn't specify which "leading companies" in polysilicon or solar panel manufacturing should hit the 2015 production goals, but it does spell out some of the long-ranging views the government holds in supporting domestic manufacturing and installation as well as research and development.

The production goals are part of a 5-year plan that began in 2011, when China upped its solar energy installation goal twice: from 10 gigawatts, which it set after Japan's nuclear disaster last March, to 15 gigawatts (cumulative) by 2015. The Chinese government said the new 5-year plan aims to promote domestic solar energy use and bolster Chinese manufacturers' competitive edge in the global market that is marked by intensifying competition and trade disputes.

The ministry's plan noted the accomplishments of the Chinese's solar manufacturing sector -- it grew quickly to become a leading supplier of solar panels from 2007 through 2010 -- and boosted the efficiencies of solar cells to as much as 19 percent for monocrystalline silicon cells. But it also noted that China still relies on more technically advanced production equipment from other countries for solar cell production and lags behind in polysilicon production and thin film technologies.

By 2015, the government wants to see 21 percent efficiency for monocrystalline silicon cells, 19 percent for polysilicon cells, and 12 percent for amorphous silicon thin films, according to the plan. It also wants to see greater research and development of solar energy storage and other technologies for integrating solar electricity into the grid.

To make solar more competitive with conventional sources of power, the plan also calls for reducing the price of solar panels to 7000 yuan per kilowatt, or around $1 per watt in today's conversion rate, by 2015. PV system price should hit 13,000 yuan per kilowatt, and the cost of solar electricity should hit 0.8 yuan per kilowatt-hour. By 2020, the solar panel price should fall to 5,000 yuan per kilowatt and 10,000 yuan per kilowatt for a PV system, and 0.6 yuan per kilowatt-hour for solar electricity generation cost (the plan doesn't specify whether it's talking about power production cost or wholesale price).

The government's intention to support manufacturing expansion might seem foolish now given the glut of solar energy equipment that has caused solar panel prices to plummet by 50 percent in 2011 and forced several manufacturers to shutter factories or file for bankruptcies all together. American solar panel makers Solyndra, SpectraWatt, Evergreen Solar and Energy Conversion Devices all have filed for bankruptcy over the past year. German company Solon has done the same.

But if China is serious about increasing its use of solar energy and planning for a global solar market that still has a lot of room to grow, then it makes sense for the government to draw a long-term manufacturing expansion plan.

Knowing when to expand production to meet growing demand is, of course, easier said than done. Building a large-scale factory (in hundreds of megawatts) and bringing it online takes a few years. If you start expansion only after a stellar year, then you may well fall behind rivals who scaled up earlier and can now market and ship more than you can in the next 12 months. Sanyo, now part of Panasonic, is closing a 30-megawatt silicon ingot and wafer factory in California this year while building a new, 300-megawatt plant in Malaysia that is set for completion by the end of this year.

But if you are investing in production equipment when there is a glut of products and prices are falling fast, as is the case in 2011, then reigning in that factory expansion plan is a wise thing to do. First Solar did -- the company decided late last year to suspend a plan to bring its Vietnam factory online.

This article was originally published in the Renewable Energy World network by www.RenewableEnergyWorld.com, and is reprinted here with permission.

Germany slashes FIT subsidies to rein in solar power installations

Thu, 23 Feb 2012 19:19:00 GMT

by John Blau, contributor, RenewableEnergyWorld.com

February 23, 2012 - Solar power has grown so massively in Germany that the government now plans to rein in the boom in photovoltaic installations by cutting generous subsidiaries.

On Thursday, after reaching an agreement with the Economics Minister Philipp Roesler, German Environment Minister Norbert Roettgen announced the most severe wave of subsidy cuts since the government began supporting solar energy in 2004.

The move comes after a further massive expansion of solar power production capacity in Germany last year and the associated costs for consumers who, in the end, pay for the above-market rates of renewable energy.

The government of German Chancellor Angela Merkel, who aims to replace nuclear power plants with renewable energy, has proposed cuts of 20 to 29 percent. They're deeper than the 15 percent reduction ordered in January and they're a month earlier than planned.

Among the key changes:

systems up to 10 kW will be subject to a 20.2 percent reduction to 19.5 euro cents per kWh;
systems from 10 to 1,000 kW will face a 25 and 29 percent reduction to 16.5 euro cents per kWh:
systems larger than 1,000 kW will see an approximate 26 percent reduction to 13.5 euro cents per kWh;
subsidies for systems over 10,000 kW will be dropped entirely in the future;
new small systems will only be remunerated for 85 percent of the electricity produced, while middle-sized and large systems will receive remuneration for 90 percent.

With its proposed changes, the government hopes to contain new capacity to between 2.5 and 3.5 gigawatts this year and next year, down from 7.5 gigawatts in 2011.

From 2014, the government targets a yearly reduction of 400 megawatts and from 2017 between 900 and 1,900 megawatts.

Germany is hardly alone in its efforts to contain costs for supporting the nascent solar power industry: France, Italy, Spain and the United Kingdom are equally tweaking their subsidies to align with falling solar panel prices and control the explosive growth.

In Germany, solar prices plunged more than 45 percent last year, due largely to rising Chinese competition.

Not surprisingly, the German government's proposals have drawn hefty criticism from the solar energy industry.

First-Solar manager David Wortmann called the cuts "a slap in the face." First-Solar is specialized in supply systems for large open spaces. His competition agrees. Phoenix-Solar CEO Andreas Haenel said the large-space market segment would be "strangled."

Carsten Koernig, head of the German solar industry association BSW, warned that thousands of jobs were in danger. Dietmar Schuetz, president of the German Renewable Energy Association BEE said the subsidy cuts represented nothing less than "an attack on the renewable energy law."

Nor are all politicians pleased with Merkel's move. Juergen Trittin, head of the Green Party parliamentary fraction, called the cuts "unreasonable" and said they carried the signature of Merkel's pro-business coalition partner, the FDP, which has shown less interest in supporting renewable energy.

The proposals will go to the cabinet next week and then on to lawmakers.

This article was originally published in the Renewable Energy World network by www.RenewableEnergyWorld.com, and is reprinted here with permission.

NREL, New Energy build largest organic PV device

Wed, 22 Feb 2012 20:21:00 GMT

February 22, 2012 - New Energy Technologies and the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) say they have created a working organic photovoltaic (OPV) module 170-sq-cm in size -- 14x larger than previous NREL-made OPV devices -- using the company's SolarWindow technology that generates electricity on see-through glass.

William Farris, VP of commercialization and technology transfer at NREL, called the achievement a "breakthrough." New Energy touts it as another step forward for building-integrated solar photovoltaic (BIPV) technology.

The heart of the development is New Energy's room-temperature "spray-on" coating to spread tiny polymer-based solar cells ("composed primarily of hydrogen and carbon"), a quarter the size of a grain of sand, onto a substrate (glass in this case), with just a tenth the thickness of other "thin" films and without high-temperature or high-vacuum methods. A lab-scale prototype device was built in August 2011.

Last month, New Energy announced that researchers had "made use of" a high-speed/large-area solution-coating process, which the company says allows for more uniform and faster coating, thus enabling more rapid scale-up to larger glass surface areas.

The company started working with NREL in March 2011 to improve the technology's efficiency, transparency (metal is the negative "polar contact" but it also blocks visibility), and electrical power output, and optimize the active layer coatings and make the layers bigger.

Goals for 2012 remain similar: push the technology further towards commercialization with larger scale, high-speed manufacturing, higher voltage, bolstered power output, and greater transparency.

Apple tips plans for 20MW solar site at NC data farm

Tue, 21 Feb 2012 19:09:00 GMT

Last year Apple commissioned its new 500,000-sq.ft. data center in Maiden, North Carolina. The facility, costing an estimated $1B facility to build, is the company's biggest data center several times over, aimed to support everything from iTunes to its iCloud services to the Siri voice functionality in the iPhone 4S. Among its other credentials: LEED Platinum status (possibly a first for any data center anywhere) and various energy-efficient design elements, from chilled water storage white cool-roofs to LED lighting to real-time power monitoring to its use of recycled and locally-sourced materials.

Reports surfaced last fall that Apple was planning some kind of solar system at the Maiden site. And today a number of outlets have keenly picked up on an updated Apple environmental report, in which the company expands on its renewable energy plans for the facility:

A 100-acre, 20-megawatt (MW) solar array, supplying 42 million kWh of energy each year. This is an impressive size; SEPA figures indicate only a dozen solar PV (and 10 CSP) projects of 20MW or larger are now operating in the US. (More than three dozen 20MW+ solar PV projects are planned to come online in 2012, followed by a bunch more, including some multi-hundred-MW behemoths, anticipated in 2013.)

A 5MW biogas system to come online later this year, providing another 40 million kWh of 24x7 baseload renewable energy annually. Apple claims this will be the largest non-utility-owned fuel cell installation in the US.

Added together, that's 82 million kWh/year of onsite renewable energy generation at the Maiden facility. That alone would have met roughly 17 percent of Apple's entire energy consumption in 2011.

We're awaiting feedback from the company (if they'll provide it) for more details about the specific technologies and suppliers involved, timelines, etc., and will update with anything we get.

IRPS set for April in Anaheim

Tue, 21 Feb 2012 18:58:00 GMT

The IEEE International Reliability Physics Symposium (IRPS) is set for April 15, 2012 – April 19, 2012, in Anaheim, CA. The IRPS is celebrating 50 years of ground-breaking semiconductor physics of failure research. Covering advanced materials, 3D integration, product reliability, transistors and circuits, silicon/packaging interactions, MEMS, GaN, and photovoltaics, the technical program promises to bring attendees the latest in semiconductor reliability concerns. For more information and to register online, browse to http://www.irps.org.

Chinese Tier-2 modules offered below $1/W

Mon, 20 Feb 2012 20:13:00 GMT

February 20, 2012 - Prices for crystalline-silicon (c-Si) solar photovoltaic (PV) modules fell below the $1/W mark in January 2012, and in some cases well below even that, marking the first time that global average prices have fallen below this milestone, according to IMS Research. Annualized price declines slowed to 22% in January, ignoring seasonality, after exceeding 50% declines in December, thanks to reductions in incentives across several major solar PV markets at the end of 2011.

With the market now stuck in overcapacity and oversaturation with solar PV modules -- so much so (some say tens of gigawatts) that Tier-1 producers and overstocks can fill demand all by themselves -- Chinese Tier-2 suppliers have desperately kept up their pricing one-upsmanship to simply keep themselves in the game at the expense of rivals. As a result, average c-Si PV module prices from this tier of suppliers has declined at double the pace of the total market -- $0.96 in January 2011, though some spot prices were seen as low as $0.80/W, typically for large orders from German distributors, says IMS. (Note that sub-$1/W is largely seen as significantly below actual manufacturing costs and is therefore unsustainable for many if not most manufacturers.)

(Further back up the chain, actions are already being taken to help ease pricing and capacity pressures -- many reports suggest that Chinese poly-Si producers have taken up to 30% of their capacity offline, in the face of a 60% plunge in pricing (to $30/kg and even lower), and may not come back online until prices rebound to nearly $50/kg.)

PV modules prices spiked in December, amid the flood to get systems in the ground before year's end and qualify for expiring incentives. But the scales flipped in January and distributors' prices fell faster than manufacturers' prices in January, notes IMS research analyst Jessica Jin. Average distributor prices for Chinese Tier-2 c-Si modules, though, were still 20% higher than manufacturing pricing, she adds.

Price declines actually slowed down in January compared to previous months, buoyed by strong demand in Europe. Germany installed more than 7GW of solar capacity in 2011, far more than the government's target, and heated discussions are still underway about slashing Germany's incentives to keep solar growth from racing beyond capabilities to accommodate it. Those impending changes, coupled with "attractive returns" for system prices in Germany -- still the world's largest solar PV end-market, ahead of hard-charging China -- "is driving demand to remain unusually high in the first few months of the year," Jin said.

Solar PV equipment replacements to ramp from 2013-2016

Tue, 14 Feb 2012 21:36:00 GMT

February 14, 2012 - After a punishing 2011 and expectations of a tough 2012, there will be a surge of demand for upgrading solar photovoltaic (PV) manufacturing equipment over the next few years, says IMS Research.

PV equipment sales are expected to sink by more than half in 2012, likely below the $6 billion range. (Some see tightness extending even into 2013.) But IMS has another take on the data: a v-shaped recovery that returns equipment spending to nearly 20% growth in both 2013 and 2014 and almost 40% in 2015. But with overcapacity still smothering new investments in production expansion, and with utilization rates at all-time lows, for now solar PV manufacturers will focus on upgrading and replacing aging equipment -- which IMS calculates as a $25 billion/20GW opportunity for equipment suppliers from now until 2016.

"There is between 2.5-4 GW of existing manufacturing capacity that requires upgrade in 2012, and this figure will steadily ramp-up over the coming few years," writes IMS senior research director Tim Dawson. "Companies wishing to remain competitive and take the opportunity to gain market share, will be forced to invest in new equipment." Those who do so with the least disruption will strengthen their market position, and the equipment suppliers who can show the clearest path to upgrades will be in position to take market share longer-term, he adds. (Note that the solar PV market's continued shake-out means fewer cell/module makers, and that will take existing manufacturing capacity offline.)

(Note that this might also spell opportunity for the remaining PV manufacturers, either to upgrade existing lines or bank some extra capacity for when they can ramp up again.)

SRC to advance PV and smart grid technologies

Tue, 14 Feb 2012 20:27:00 GMT

Semiconductor Research Corporation (SRC), a university-research consortium for semiconductors and related technologies based in Research Triangle Park, N.C., is adding three members to the global Energy Research Initiative (ERI) that focuses on new technologies for renewable energy and its efficient and reliable distribution on the power grid. The addition of Hydro One Networks, NEC and ON Semiconductor brings the recently created ERI to 10 members and expands the team’s focus to include finding new materials, devices and methodologies for power controls/management and energy collection, conversion and storage.

ERI’s goal is to address the world's need for smart alternative energy sources and prepare students with the technical skills required for the growing industry. ERI’s approach is to create and leverage university research centers to address the specific energy research needs of its industry members.

Joining with ERI charter members ABB, Applied Materials, Bosch, First Solar, IBM, Nexans and Tokyo Electron, the three new member companies also will collaborate with selected universities to conduct the industry-specified research.

“It’s a rare advantage for research to enjoy such a diverse range of international expertise as these 10 members of the ERI represent,” said SRC Executive Vice President Steven Hillenius. “We recognize that the scope of what’s required to integrate renewable energy with the smart grid most efficiently is more than what any one company or industry can achieve. By applying its world-class individual and collective strengths, this team of industry and academia should generate far-reaching benefits for global energy use.”

Started in 2010, the ERI focused initially on two critical areas for efficient distribution of renewable energy resources – photovoltaics (PV) and systems and technologies to enable and optimize smart grids. Two centers for ERI research were established at Purdue and Carnegie Mellon universities to work with the industry to produce new findings for commercial applications to photovoltaics (PV) and smart grid.

The new, third center designated to drive advances in power electronics and energy storage will leverage existing centers of excellence in these critical areas and also include researchers from other universities worldwide. As planned, advancements from the current ERI centers in PV and smart grid will be integrated with results from the new center in power electronics and energy storage to provide efficient and affordable solutions for power generation, distribution and use from renewable energy systems.

Among critical elements of the combined effort, the ERI team is creating modeling and simulation tools to support the development of improved photovoltaic devices. They also are developing systems and technologies that will enable an efficient, reliable and secure smart grid electricity infrastructure with integrated renewable energy resources.

In addition to chip manufacturers and energy-related companies, several other industries could also gain greater product effectiveness from related research into ERI’s areas of expertise. These discoveries and their applications ultimately should allow for the realization of a cleaner, more affordable energy network for the planet.

In support of the ERI mission, the third center of research excellence, the Power Electronics and Energy Storage Center, is expected to begin work this spring. Key overarching technical challenges addressed by the center will be:

· Development of solid state devices with high-voltage/current handling capabilities;

· Bi-directional power electronics for interfacing, control and stabilization of intermittent renewable energy, including PV at the home/office and smart grid; and

· Improved performance and lower cost methods for controlling parallel groups of energy storage cells (potential application of wireless sensors), optimized charge/release functions with the grid and dynamic Volt-Var support including optimization of battery charging efficiency and battery life.

ERI is managed by the SRC subsidiary, Energy Research Corp, which was formed in 2009 to create opportunities between the semiconductor industry and energy sector.

Stop the solar industry's self-destruction over grid parity

Tue, 14 Feb 2012 14:59:00 GMT

February 14, 2012 - Grid parity is killing the solar industry. The result will be the end of many new careers, the stalling of some mature careers, and the loss of the very expertise the industry needs to continue innovating.

Lower manufacturing costs and higher efficiencies are the result of years, and sometimes decades, of research and development. Innovation does not happen overnight -- it is the result of long hours in the lab, years going from pilot-scale to commercial-scale manufacturing and years in the field proving reliability. Lack of support for incremental improvements, too much focus on champion cell results, and using announcements and roadmaps as data have placed the PV industry -- and all solar -- firmly on the slippery slope of unmet expectations. Profit, or simply breaking even, is sacrificed on the altar of grid parity.

Every conference, it seems, includes one or two presentations about the industry achievement of grid parity, proclaiming how PV has arrived and is finally at the point where it can compete without subsidies with conventional energy -- which is itself the beneficiary of tax subsidies, direct subsidies, and indirect well-hidden subsidies. (At recent conferences, speakers have tried to switch focus from technology manufacturer failures and losses to tout system prices as proof that the industry has achieved grid parity and will continue to grow despite these losses and failures. Financial statements, even from manufacturers in China, point to unsustainably low technology prices.) Some say that the system price is the important metric when discussing grid parity and that the cost of the module is not the point.

However, without the module there is no system, and without today's artificially low module prices there would be no grid parity. Without reasonable margins, technology manufacturers globally will continue to fail, and without manufacturers there will be no PV industry. The module has borne the brunt of downward price pressure for far too long -- cost and efficiency improvements are also available at the balance-of-system level, not to mention the efficiency improvements left to be explored at the installation level. And in the U.S. and other areas of the world, permitting and other costs artificially raise the system cost and constrain margins for demand side participants.

Accepting that all levels of the PV (all solar) value chain need to realize reasonable margins requires an acceptance that at all levels there are costs over which the manufacturer (even of raw materials) and installer have no control. These costs include raw materials, consumables, equipment and labor. Concerning utility-scale (multi-megawatt) installations, performance is the important metric, and the cost of unexpected weather events, such as extreme sand storms, must be taken into account by investors and system owners.

Assumptions and repercussions

Downward price pressure has haunted the solar industry from the outset. To combat government and public opinion over its supposedly high (but actually realistic) system prices and the cost of its electricity to the end user, the industry has promised to be competitive with conventional energy without subsidies. Hence, from its inception the industry has been forced to push system prices down regardless of manufacturing realities, and with both the demand and supply sides experiencing negative margins at one time or another. During the recent past at megawatt levels of capacity and supported by large oil companies (BP, Shell) and as subsidiaries of other conglomerates, losses on the manufacturing side went by and large ignored. At multi-gigawatt levels, significant losses on the manufacturing side cannot be ignored because PV technology manufacturers are failing almost weekly.

In the mid-2000s, the relatively new feed-in-tariff (FiT) incentive model caught the attention of investors. These investors, realizing that the generous and (at the time) stable incentive could result in profits, pushed the industry in a new direction toward utility-scale (multi-megawatt) installations from which profits could be derived for ~20 years. This period coincided with a severe polysilicon shortage (not the first time, by the way). During this time, and not only driven by high prices for polysilicon, prices for technology (modules) increased significantly, and manufacturers enjoyed healthy margins for a few years while margins for the demand side (installers, system integrators, et al), particularly for small to medium entities, suffered. It was during this time that the topic of grid parity became popular, and many new technology companies were founded under the assumption that lower costs would result. Quite a few of these new entrants, of all sizes, are no longer around.

Ignored during this time was the potential that the incentives could: a) change drastically and become less profitable, as these instruments are designed to do; or b) suffer retroactive changes that would render already installed systems unprofitable; or c) disappear suddenly. (See Spain as an example of a, b and c.)

It was during that highly profitable FiT era that China took notice and began investing heavily in its PV industry, specifically in crystalline -- an action that went largely ignored partly because of the widely accepted assumption that crystalline technology represented the past. When ready, manufacturers from China (and in some cases Taiwan) began pricing aggressively for share, a strategic tactic not new to the solar industry and widely practiced by other industries. Fact: the region or group that invests the most heavily to support its manufacturing will usually win. Unfortunately, the current situation proves the cliché: you get what you pay for. Paying closer attention to PV industry behavior and margin data for its manufacturing side might have resulted in more judicious action by all, as would the understanding that incentive-driven industries that compete with many substitutes are inherently risky.

Accept and change

There is an energy revolution going on globally, and it will be costly to push toward a change in the way energy is sourced. In the end, a higher price of electricity -- and cost of it -- will have to be accepted. It will be neither easy, nor fun. Solar and all of its technologies are not going away, but all levels of the value chain need to have healthy margins. New business and financing models will help, but are not the entire answer. A strong stomach is required to survive the current period -- a period where consolidation has become a buzzword for failure.

In the end, solar is not going away, but maybe promises of grid parity should. That, or a new definition of grid parity is needed.

Paula Mints is principal analyst, PV Services Program, at Navigant Consulting.

First Solar (FSLR) Antelope Valley Solar Ranch crimped by DoE loan delay

Mon, 13 Feb 2012 22:32:00 GMT

February 13, 2012 - First Solar was a major beneficiary of last year's Department of Energy loan guarantee program, inking nearly $4 billion in loan guarantees last fall for more than a gigawatt of solar projects. Two of them have since changed ownership, partly dependent upon receiving those commitments; one of them was the the 230MW Antelope Valley Solar Ranch 1 project in the western Mojave desert, which secured $646 million in federal loans and loan guarantees, and was subsequently bought by Excelon. (A third, the 550-megawatt Topaz Solar Farm, failed to pull together a $2 billion DoE loan consideration but was eventually bought by MidAmerica Holdings.)

Now, the Antelope Valley project seems to be running into some headwinds. Construction has been proceeding, but "an outstanding construction permit issue" has held up the initial funding, the company claims in a SEC filing. If the situation isn't resolved and the monies received within four months of the original commitment -- a date they peg at Feb. 24, including an extension -- First Solar would have to repurchase AVSR for the original purchase price of around $75 million "plus certain other costs incurred by Exelon related to the project." FSLR says it does have the funds for such a buyback, and that the project is still expected to contribute revenue once the loan comes through.

It's hard to say what this all means in a broader scope. Large utility-scale projects, particularly the hundreds-of-megawatt-sized ones, have run into all sorts of delays and snags with permitting and financing issues, so investors shouldn't be too put off by this. On the other hand, it's a little unnerving to get a snag at this late date, which apparently endangers the Antelope Valley project ownership. (FSLR depends on the higher margins on the project end.) Analysts suggest, though, that the DoE backing itself is not at risk, and that Excelon probably won't call it quits over a "minor issue like a construction permit."

Optimizing solar projects to maximize ROI

Fri, 10 Feb 2012 22:07:00 GMT

by Bill Elwell, SPG Solar

February 10, 2012 - The solar industry is facing new realities as the economics of solar are changing. Predicting photovoltaic (PV) panel pricing is 'iffy' at best. The US Treasury 1603 cash grants are history. Optimizing the energy produced and making the most of available land have become increasingly important as investors and project developers look for a viable economic model to maximize ROI. With fossil fuel energy prices on the rise, government incentives for solar wavering, and a solar trade war being waged over the price of Chinese solar panels -- delivering innovative, high-performing solar power solutions is more critical now than ever before.

Cheaper panels?

Solar PV panels typically represent up to 40 percent of a project's overall cost. And the price of solar panels fell 47 percent in 2011, according to Bloomberg. This has made the business case for solar more competitive and is driving the industry towards grid parity. With these lower panel prices, another year of growth is expected for the industry in 2012. However, there is a cloud on the horizon. Should the US impose tariffs on the low cost panels imported from China, US manufacturers will be in a better position to compete, but the overall competitiveness of solar as an energy alternative could be slowed with these lower cost panels from China no longer available. Whatever happens, the availability of cheaper panels cannot be counted on as a solution to the ROI challenge.

Optimized solar power systems

The other way to paint a brighter picture for investors is to optimize solar power systems. By capturing more sun and generating more electricity to bring to market higher returns on the project investment become a reality.

Tracking the sun

A solar tracking system is an automated racking system which moves the solar panels to follow the trajectory of the sun throughout the course of the day. Solar trackers can increase solar power production by up to 25 percent compared to a fixed-tilt system. SPG Solar is one of a handful of solar companies worldwide that specializes in building solar systems that utilize single-axis ground mount tracking technology. The larger the project, the greater the impact of today's tracker technology.

Efficient power conversion

Producing more energy from panels with a tracker system is pointless if it can't be transferred to the grid. The latest inverter technology is keeping pace with the increased power output from PV panels. Inverters boost total power transfer by 5-12 percent through high efficiency, localized command and control and higher kilowatt-hours per day. Advances in inverter technology mitigate power loss, and significantly add to a solar power system's output over its lifespan.

As the solar industry struggles with the uncertainty in panel pricing, it is turning to the optimization of system energy output to make the economic case for solar and attract investment dollars. The focus is no longer on driving down panel and other system hardware costs or on improving the output of the actual cells. Innovation -- the industry's trademark -- across the entire value chain will save the day.

Learn more at SOLAR POWER-GEN

At Solar POWER-GEN 2012 in Long Beach, CA next week, a panel of experts will address ways to improve the return on investment for utility scale PV power generation. This panel on Wednesday Feb. 12 2012, includes Bill Elwell of SPG Solar; Brian von Moos of Borrego Solar Systems; John Skibinski of American Electric Technologies; Joseph Mossoba of Satcon Technology Corp.; Mark Rawson of Sacramento Municipal Utility District; and Seema Ghosh of Black & Veatch. It will be an open discussion targeting ways to achieve ROI, including system design, module and BOS selection, performance modeling, and O&M.

Surviving our solar winter of discontent

Thu, 09 Feb 2012 03:40:00 GMT

February 8, 2012 -

"Now is the winter of our discontent
made glorious summer by this son of York;
and all the clouds that low'r'd upon our house
In the deep bosom of the ocean buried."
-- Shakespeare, Richard III, Act 1, Scene 1.

2011 saw several highly visible company failures, and 2012 is likely so see more before the solar winter of discontent gives way to glorious summer. Here's a snapshot of just the past week:

Japanese conglomerate SUMCO announced liquidation of its solar subsidiaries, raw material manufacturer Minamata Denshi Company and wafer manufacturer (continuous casting) SUMCO Solar, due to continued pressure on prices.

REC Group reported heavier-than-expected losses in 4Q11, though it did cite some improved module demand "at the very end" of the quarter. But the company reportedly is mulling more plant closures, and even willingness to explore a merger or acquisition.

Bekaert, which supplies wire saws to slice silicon ingots into wafers, says it will is restructuring, determining that "immediate action" is needed to fight off "difficult market conditions in the solar energy sector."

Consolidation can provide a healthy winnowing out for an industry. The current era of consolidation in the solar industry, though expected, is not healthy, however -- it is the direct result of blind faith in the inevitability of incentives, while ignoring the inherent risks of an incentive-driven market.

As the PV industry moves into its long-expected and long-delayed correction year (or two), one thing is certain; this too will pass. It may be a painful slog towards recovery, but the industry will recover, bringing with it accelerated learning in terms of reducing manufacturing costs, improved installation practices, and advancements in balance-of-systems (BoS). Along the way, though, there will be much discontent.

Figure 1 offers a picture of 2011 metrics entering 2012; though counting is still underway, the data is presented with high confidence. The methodology used is classic market research and primary research: shipments are PV technology (thin films and crystalline) to the first point of sale (first buyer), production refers to the technology that the manufacturer produced whether or not it was shipped, outsourcing (reselling of technology between manufacturers) has always been a common practice in the PV industry, more so in recent years. Production figures often include outsourced technology leading to an oversizing of the market.

The figure also includes an estimate of installations for 2011. With current high levels of inventory, the installation number can, on a market-by-market basis, be higher than shipments. It also includes commercial capacity, and announced capacity, announced production and inventory into 2012. At the start of 2012, high levels of inventory continue to hold module and cell prices down at artificially low levels.

Figure 1: PV industry metrics, 2011 into 2012

Who's selling and who's buying

Supply is who sold (shipped) the technology. Demand is who bought the technology, though this does not necessarily mean that the technology was installed. In 2011, China/ Taiwan shipped 61% of technology to the first point of sale (Figure 2), up from 54% in 2010 and 46% in 2009. If this trend continues, China/Taiwan will manufacture and ship close to 70% of technology in 2012. Unfortunately, as with manufacturers in the other regions, this technology is highly likely to be shipped at a loss.

On the demand side of the equation, there's another clear trend. Europe consumed 65% of technology in 2011, while shipping 8%. In 2010, manufacturers in Europe shipped 15% of technology, while consuming 80% of all technology shipped.

Figure 2: 2011 Regional supply and demand market shares.

In 2011, low prices for crystalline technology pressured c-Si manufacturers while creating a highly competitive climate for thin-film manufacturers. Despite the rapid downward trajectory for cell and module prices (cells as low as $0.50/Wp, with modules below $1/Wp), thin-film manufactures almost miraculously held onto a 13% share of total shipments in 2011 (Figure 3:).

Unfortunately, the competitive climate in 2012 has not improved. What's a manufacturer to do? Hold on for dear life and wait it out.

Figure 3: Technology market shares, 2009-2011.

How to lose money on every Watt sold

In 2012, average selling prices remain artificially low. The proof of this is in the negative margins currently experienced by PV technology manufacturers. On the demand side, bidding on large projects, PPA prices, have also dipped to painfully low levels, likely on the assumption that since these projects (particularly in the U.S.) are several years from actual building out, the current low prices will continue downward, leaving enough cushion in the margin to overcome a bid of <$0.08/wp.

Meanwhile, statements about grid parity seem to be arguing for a paradigm in which all manufacturers lose money and eventually go out of business.

Figure 4: Average selling prices to the first buyer, 2000-2015 (forecast). Average price for reselling inventory in 2012: $0.95/Wp.

Ah, to be done with the solar winter of discontent, and then bask in the glow of glorious summer. Announcements are coming (in some cases imminent) of changes to FiT structures and rates, some retroactive, with once bountiful markets likely to be far less so in the very near future. The solar industry will need to work with less-robust incentives. New business models and true cost reductions will ease the global industry into a healthier competitive position. Faster learning (cost reduction) in balance-of-systems components and more efficient, faster installation practices will help -- because PV technology manufacturers cannot continue to bear the burden of cost reduction. Regarding cost savings on the installation side, wage expectations and laws (such as prevailing wage in some areas of the U.S.) are a variable that may not be controllable.

2012 is likely to be an ugly year in solar, with significant infighting between the demand and supply sides of the market (demand wants prices low, supply needs prices to rise in order to survive). With high levels of manufacturing capacity, high levels of inventory, and decreasing incentives, the current low prices will be around for a while -- and this is not good. Consolidation and the failure of more companies will help bring higher prices, and with them a return to healthy manufacturer margins -- that is, for those left standing.

But in the end, remember: this too will pass.

What's driving North America's solar PV market in 2012?

Wed, 08 Feb 2012 16:10:00 GMT

February 8, 2012 - The North American solar photovoltaic (PV) market tacked on nearly another full gigawatt (GW) of installations in 4Q11, echoing a late-year surge seen in other markets (think Germany and Asia), says NPD Solarbuzz. New Jersey, California, Arizona, and Ontario accounted for two-thirds of that demand; more than half (59 percent) was for large-scale ground-mount systems.

In the US overall, thank (or blame?) the expiring US Federal Cash Grant for accelerating project activity to beat the year-end deadline. At the state level, California's Solar Initiative ratepayer program brought in an extra $200 million during the quarter, helping to pare down a long waitlist of customer-side distributed generation. Also, as part of California's Renewable Portfolio Standard target (33% of energy from renewable sources by 2020), the state is implementing several programs to stimulate distributed generation projects ranging form 1-20MW.

In New Jersey, though, that 4Q11 growth might be short-lived, thanks to an oversupply of Solar Renewable Energy Credits (SREC). Neither NJ nor Pennsylvania has adjusted their RPS solar obligations to fix an SRECs oversupply, says Solarbuzz.

Moving above the border to Canada, large-scale projects completed during 4Q11 were already approved under Ontario's previous incentive program, the Renewable Energy Standard Offer Program (RESOP). The feed-in tariff (FiT) program that replaced it spurred roughly 100MW of smaller-scale residential and nonresidential projects in 2011, says Solarbuzz, while large-scale systems under the FiT have been slow to start due to regulatory and approval delays. Other areas such as project financing product supply agreements are showing progress, though, suggesting projects are well advanced and should install in 2012.

(Note that solar PV industry watchers define "installations" differently, e.g. announced projects, shipped modules, actual grid-connection, etc. For its part, Solarbuzz calculates "installations" as modules that arrived at the end-site, not completion or interconnection. This is significant, because the timing between module shipments, installation completion, and grid connection can be months or even quarters. For what it's worth, Maxim's Aaron Chew calculated combined US and Canada installs at 2.24GW).

North American share by photovoltaic market segment. BM = "building mounted." (Source: NPD Solarbuzz)

2012 trends: Fragmenting US markets, Canada's new FiT

Looking ahead into 2012, the US has a 25GW pipeline for nonresidential and utility solar projects, some of which qualified for the Cash Grant, meaning they can only ship and be installed this year, points out Solarbuzz senior analyst Junko Movellan. [Update 2/8: Movellan subsequently clarified this point: "Projects can be installed up to at the end of 2016 as long as project developers can either prove that physical work of a significant nature had begun by the end of 2011, or that the applicant paid or incurred 5.00% or more of the total cost of the specified energy property before the end of 2011."] And residential demand will grow only modestly in 2012, with lower system prices and lease financing programs mostly balanced by declining market prices in the five key states that have met their RPS requirements. Price reductions in 2011 were accelerated by Chinese module supplies; the US vs. China solar trade dispute further reshaped supply and pricing toward year's end, and the official ruling for it (now due in mid-March) "will shape the 2H12 supply mix," she notes.

And look for more restructuring in downstream channels as end markets shift. Larger downstream companies will run away from residential demand as it fragments into smaller state markets, while new project development entrants clamor to bring nonresidential and utility project pipelines to market, says Solarbuzz.

Canada's 2012 solar PV market will hinge greatly on the review of Ontario's FiT program that started in October, and whether key elements of the existing program structure are retained, notes Solarbuzz analyst Michael Barker. He anticipates rates falling between 10-30 percent, "in concert with greater specificity on technology or customer-type goals."

Suntech, DuPont to collab on solar backsheets, supply-chain improvements

Fri, 03 Feb 2012 16:15:00 GMT

February 3, 2012 - It's easy to think about modules as singular units of power output, but the reality is that they are a collection of diverse components each with influence over the end system's performance. For DuPont, its focus is of course on the materials side, from metallization pastes used to form contacts on the solar cell, to backsheet materials that protect the panels themselves.

The latter is the focus of a new expanded partnership between Suntech and DuPont, specifically on DuPont's Tedlar polyvinyl fluoride film (though the deal also includes other materials supplies). The two will explore technology advancements in backsheets: their construction and how that affects their longevity, and how backsheets might even improve the module's power output, according to Maria Boulden, global sales manager for Dupont Photovoltaics Solutions.

Being able to save a few pennies per watt in lower module costs is important, but improving a panel's reliability across an entire system's lifetime (typically 20-25 years) "is exponentially more," she explained.

An interesting angle to this partnership is that DuPont is also lending a hand to help Suntech improve and optimize its supply chain. DuPont is a big proponent of Six Sigma and resulting efficiencies and cost savings, and has developed its own Center of Excellence in supply-chain optimization and "lean technology," noted Boulden. Thus the company sees a competitive advantage to sharing its learnings about tightly coordinating manufacturing and inventories, something it can offer any module maker. The two firms already have been talking about such areas of improvements, she said.

The two companies also will pursue "comarketing" to help educate customers (and partners) down the value chain.

Miasolé claims 17% efficient CIGS device, 14% in production

Thu, 02 Feb 2012 19:57:00 GMT

February 2, 2012 - Miasolé says it has created a 17.3 percent "champion" thin-film copper-indium-gallium-selenide (CIGS) solar photovoltaic device, results obtained in its own labs and not (yet) independently verified. The company also says it has started making 14 percent efficient modules in production at its facility in Silicon Valley, up from the 13.5 percent average-efficiency modules in volume production since last fall. Those milestones, the company says, represent a 30 percent increase in efficiency from a year ago, and beat its own roadmap by a full year.

"Our ability to deliver 14 percent in production with the capability to achieve efficiency up to 17 percent further emphasizes the progress we are continuously making against our roadmap," said Miasolé CEO John Carrington in a statement. The company handily provided a chart for its module efficiency roadmap, showing an intersection with poly-Si efficiency sometime in 2013.

Miasolé ranked tops among CIGS solar PV modules in a recent Solarplaza study. (Note that top poly-Si module suppliers are currently around 15-16 percent efficiency as ranked by Solarplaza; mono-Si cell makers are at 21-22 percent, which translates to around 19-20 percent module efficiency.)

Miasolé sits alongside a couple of other firms (and behind leader Solar Frontier) in the CIGS universe, as recently drawn out by Lux Research, as potential "champions" if things shake out in their favor, from execution across module efficiency and production yields to building relationships with customers and partners. The company raised over $100 million during 2011, and though it has ties with Intel to help improve its manufacturing, it continues to seek out "the right partner that could help make Miasolé a more long-term enduring company that's good for our shareholders and our employees," according to Carrington. The company claims 55MW of panels shipped to date for projects in North America, Europe, and Asia.

Europe's 2011-2012 PV installs: Two tales of growth

Wed, 01 Feb 2012 19:56:00 GMT

February 1, 2012 - Two reports out in the past week examine Europe's solar PV market in 2011, indicating slowing growth in the flagship countries and promise in some smaller regions for 2012 and beyond. Note that the data that follows is preliminary; final 2011 numbers won't be known until later in the first quarter, including some likely revisions thanks to a stronger-than-expected fourth quarter in several key regions (more on that below).

New grid-connected PV capacity worldwide in 2011 rose by 67 percent to nearly 28 gigawatts (GW), nearly 21GW of that in Europe (up 57 percent from 2010's 13.3GW), and 60 percent in Italy and Germany alone says the European Photovoltaic Industry Association (EPIA). Meanwhile, NPD Solarbuzz calculates Europe's solar photovoltaic (PV) market growth at 18 percent overall in 2011, with a 23 percent surge in 4Q11 that will quickly result in changes in incentive policies, particularly in Germany and Spain. (We've inquired to the EPIA and Solarbuzz about how they calculate end-demand and growth; we're assuming the difference between their numbers is explainable in how they define what is "installed" and when, or perhaps using different sets of data e.g. demand- vs. supply-side.)

Total installed PV capacity worldwide topped 67GW (vs. 39.7GW in 2010), with energy output of around 80 billion kWh enough to supply 20 million households, says the EPIA. In Europe, over 50GW of PV systems were installed at the end of 2011, producing some 60 billion kWh on an annual basis. The EPIA seems confident that Europe increased its cumulative capacity base by over 50 percent.

Here's the EPIA's summary of new grid-connected PV in 2011, by region:

- Germany (7.5GW), helped by a late-year rush to keep current FiTs and a mild winter;
- Italy (quadrupling to 9GW of newly connected systems), thanks to a rush to take advantage of 2010's more friendly FiT;
- France (1.5GW), mainly for systems that were installed in 2010, thanks to the nation's lengthy grid connection process;
- The UK (700MW) surged thanks to a Jan. 2011 "fast-track review" benefitting for >50kW systems, and a rush to grid-connect more systems ahead of a year-end FiT cut;
- Belgium (550MW), despite reduced support schemes;
- Spain (400MW), whose solar market spectacularly flared and ebbed in 2008-2009;
- Slovakia (350MW), where PV connections slammed to a halt after a July pullback on PV support;
- Greece (350MW), with particular strength in the residential segment (60MW).

Missing from that list is the Czech Republic, which ramped to 2GW of installations over the past two years but put in less than 10MW in 2011 due to "strong opposition from major stakeholders," says the EPIA. Other regions with small but growing PV capacities include Austria (100MW) and Bulgaria (80MW).

EPIA_EuropesolarPV20102011_table
(Source: European Photovoltaic Industry Association [EPIA])

Looking specifically at 4Q11 results, German solar PV installations surged 63 percent in just the final three months of the year, while the UK and Belgium added 370MW, according to Solarbuzz. Thank oft-cited mild weather and impending FiT reductions. German officials, for example, are debating a cap vs. monthly FiT stepdowns instead of biennial adjustments. Italy and France's PV markets actually declined in 4Q11 due to installation deadlines and tariff reductions.

The late-year boom is causing nations to rethink their solar-friendly incentive policies in 2012, notes NPD Solarbuzz. 1Q12 demand will increase 10 percent, with notable growth in Belgium, France, Spain, and Greece, and a potential "short-term boom" in the UK depending on how that country resolves its dispute over cancellation of solar incentives.

120127_solarbuzz_Q411_european_market_segmentation
4Q11 European market segmentation. Total installs were 7.04GW. (Source: NPD Solarbuzz)

With Europe's 2011 solar PV growth balancing on solar incentive pullbacks and a weak project financing environment, offset by collapsing module prices, 2012 solar PV demand might well hinge on one question, notes Solarbuzz Europe VP Alan Turner: whether "wholesalers are confident enough to build inventories in the face of continued policy uncertainty."

Solarbuzz anticipates Germany and Italy's combined market size will shrink by more than a third (-37 percent) in 2012, while countries with the strongest growth are expected to be Austria, Bulgaria, the Czech Republic, and Romania. New markets are emerging in the East and Southeast Europe; two 100MW PV plants were built in the Ukraine in 2011, and look for two 150MW plants in Serbia in 2012, plus a 1GW project slated for 2013-2015.

Growth for all countries will be triggered by two factors: reduced incentive tariffs means less public funding needed to build out individual markets, and as solar PV approaches "grid parity" with retail electricity prices in some markets, investors will become less dependent on public funding. In France, for example, a 60MW project is in the works from a major developer based on a 30-year PPA with a local utility; similar prospects are being discussed in Greece at the government level, says Solarbuzz. In Spain, though, prospects are dimmer for comparable projects due to the nation's "very large electricity generating capacity overhang" and resulting moratorium on any new renewable electricity plants.

US vs. China solar redux: CASE, Brattle Group lament US jobs at stake

Mon, 30 Jan 2012 22:13:00 GMT

January 30, 2012 - In the latest round of fisticuffs between US and Chinese solar firms, the Coalition for Affordable Solar Energy (CASE) and consultancy The Brattle Group claim that any US-levied tariffs on imported Chinese solar products would cost tens of thousands of jobs and dent US solar demand. (In a related story -- do they get together and time these things? -- the Coalition for American Solar Manufacturing seemingly has the US Department of Commerce in its corner.)

According to the study commissioned by CASE [PDF provided here], imposing a 50% tariff would result in anywhere from $621M to $2.3B in "net consumer losses" and around 15,000 to 43,000 jobs lost over the following three years. For a 100% tariff, those numbers jump to $698M and $2.6B and ~17,000-50,000 jobs. On top of that, CASE and Brattle Group add likely retaliation by China to slap a tariff on US polysilicon exports, which they say would claim nearly 11,000 jobs within a year. "Even under the most conservative assumptions, we did not find a scenario where imposing a tariff would create more jobs than it eliminates," says report author Mark Berkman.

Imposing tariffs of either level would hike module prices by 25%-30%, which might help domestic producers but ultimately will get passed on to consumers. And these calculations assume that PV costs will keep falling, technologies will keep improving, and incentives will stay on the books, without which "the negative impacts of the tariff on employment would be significantly greater."

The report also looks at the potential end-demand impacts of any tariff on Chinese solar imports. If no tariff is imposed, aggregate demand for PV systems would nearly triple to 4.9GW by 2014; a 50% tariff, CASE and Brattle Group say, would raise prices and delay growth, possibly denting end demand to 3.35GW in 2014; a 100% tariff would stunt growth to 3.16GW.

Tariffs slow US PV demand growth. (Source: The Brattle Group, CASE)

Not surprisingly, CASM quickly came up with a list of rebuttals to the CASE study. In a statement, SolarWorld CEO Gordon Brinser calls the study "highly speculative" and devoid of any connection to trade laws, which are the crux of CASM's case. Chinese importers, not American consumers, will reap any benefits of lower costs, CASM and SolarWorld claim: "US consumers will sustain the brunt of economic harm if China cinches a monopoly over world production, destroying the US domestic manufacturing industry along the way." The study also doesn't emphasize (as they claim it should) the importance of losing high-tech and manufacturing jobs which are seen as key to underpinning the US economy. And solar manufacturing in particular leads to energy independence: "Why should we want to rely on illegal imports from China for our supply of solar energy?"

Brinser and CASM also take issue with CASE president Jigar Shah's reference to a Wall Street Journal article which suggests that US firms haven't benefitted as hoped from duties on imports of Chinese tires. "Two years ago, the resellers of Chinese tires put out a very similar study, claiming that for every US manufacturing job saved by the Section 421 trade action then being investigated, anywhere between 12 and 25 jobs at tire retailers would be lost," they say. "This never happened. There is no reason to believe that CASE's study on behalf of dumped subsidized Chinese imports will prove to be any more accurate."

"Solar manufacturers of the West didn't start a trade war; in fact, we're attempting to stop it," CASM says.

US vs. China solar redux: US Commerce Department eyes retroactive penalties

Mon, 30 Jan 2012 21:55:00 GMT

January 30, 2012 - Another round of fisticuffs between US manufacturers of solar products, aka Coalition for American Solar Manufacturing (CASM) vs. the Coalition for Affordable Solar Energy (CASE). This time CASM seemingly has the US Department of Commerce (DoC) in its corner. (In a related story -- do they get together and time these things? -- CASE has a new study that handwrings over the potential impact of tariffs on US jobs and end-market demand.)

Last week CASM revealed its tracking of what it called a 110% surge in Chinese solar imports over the past several months, ostensibly to get product into the country ahead of any negative ruling from the DoC. The DoC apparently agrees with that assessment [PDF provided by CASM].

Such a flood of imports, CASM argues, opens the door for a "critical circumstances" ruling that would retroactively apply any duties by 90 days from the preliminary determination. The DoC has now postponed such a determination for a second time, first to Feb. 13 and now to March 2, due in part to what CASM calls "slow responses from the Chinese respondents," so now the retroactivity would apply as of early December. And again, the DoC seems to be ready to agree to that "critical" assessment [PDF again provided by CASM].

Bottom line: March 2 is the new date to watch. If the DoC rules in favor of CASM and US solar manufacturers, it will apply (as yet undetermined) duties retroactively to December.

Key summaries from the DoC document spell things out:

"We find that there is a reasonable basis to believe or suspect that certain subsidy allegations under investigation are inconsistent with the SCM Agreement [Subsidies and Countervailing Measures Agreement of the World Trade Organization], and we find that there have been massive imports of solar cells over a relatively short period from Suntech, Trina, and all other producers or exporters."

"Based on information provided by Petitioner and the data placed on the record of this investigation by the mandatory respondents, Wuxi Suntech Power Co., Ltd. (Suntech) and Changzhou Trina Solar Energy Co., Ltd. (Trina) (collectively, respondents), the Department preliminarily determines that critical circumstances exist for imports of solar cells from the PRC for Suntech, Trina, and all other producers or exporters."

"If we make an affirmative preliminary determination that countervailable subsidies have been provided to respondents at above de minimis rates, we will instruct U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) to suspend liquidation of all entries of solar cells from the PRC, as described in the "Scope of Investigation" section of the Initiation Notice, that are entered, or withdrawn from warehouse, for consumption on or after the date that is 90 days prior to the effective date of "provisional measures."

Sorting out solar PV downstream M&A

Mon, 30 Jan 2012 10:00:00 GMT

January 30, 2012 - The volatile swings seen in the upstream part of the solar PV supply chain, from silicon to cell/module pricing, have been well documented. End-market demand and associated policies supporting it is also a roller coaster, with many key regions currently embroiled in what to do for 2012 and beyond.

Meanwhile, downstream sectors in the solar PV supply chain -- those involved with financing, development, and installation -- represent the final step in monetizing a solar PV project. Firms in this universe have created a fragmentation that creates pockets of niche specialists in key areas vs. full turnkey integrators (read: high-margins), and insulates against that upstream sturm und drang.

And investors -- both VC and firms seeking expansion via M&A -- are paying more attention to the downstream side of the industry (see graphic below), seeking to spawn more innovation and leaner business models. Downstream start-ups, led by SolarCity, SunRun, Recurrent Energy, SunEdison, and Solar Power Partners, have raised over $1 billion. (Note that Solyndra raised a billion on its own, in headier times for all involved.) This is "setting up a battle between cleantech industrialists and general contractors/self-funded construction industry veterans," Lux claims.

Conclusions from the Lux study are carved into three categories of developers and installers:

Residential: SolarCity dominates this crowded market, but its expansion into the Northeast wont' be easy. SunRun is building its partner roster, and the Alteris-Real Goods merger creates another strong player.

Commercial and utility-scale: Tioga and Enfinity lead a group of new large-scale developers, but this sector has few up-and-coming players, says Lux. Acquisitions of Recurrent, SunEdison, and SPP have concentrated large-scale development to larger companies or vertically integrated suppliers (First Solar, SunPower).

High-potential startups: An influx of venture capital is spawning "a burst of entrepreneurial activity" and a "steady stream" of startups. Solar installers were prominent in Inc. Magazine's 2011 list of the 50 fastest growing US companies: Greenspring Energy, re2g, SunDurance Energy, OnForce Solar, and FLS Energy.

Downstream M&A activity has remained high since MEMC bought SunEdison in Nov. 2009. (Source: Lux Research)

Survey reveals customers' wish list for PV inverter improvements

Fri, 27 Jan 2012 18:36:00 GMT

January 27, 2012 - System-level monitoring, continued adoption of string inverters for large PV installs, and improvements by Chinese suppliers are among the trends gleaned from a survey of inverter buyers & sellers.

In a survey conducted in 4Q11, IMS Research asked more than 400 PV installers, distributors, and engineering/procurement/construction (EPC) firms about their purchasing habits for solar inverters: brand and product preference, product features, microinverters and power optimizers, service/warranty, and pricing, and what customers want to see improved in inverter technology. The survey covered several major global markets, with responses parsed by country and customer type.

Among the key findings from the survey results:

Western inverter suppliers are still clearly favored, and market-leader SMA in particular has great brand affinity. But nearly 30% of respondents, with an emphasis on Europe (Italy and the UK in particular), indicated they think Chinese products are of "acceptable quality."

Survey respondents still see room for improvements. For string inverters, they want more MPPT channels and a wider MPP range; for central inverters it's improved system monitoring and fault detection, noted report co-author Cormac Gilligan.

Also gleaned from the survey: continued adoption of three-phase string inverters for large PV installations. More than 70% of respondents said they would consider using a string inverter in >750kW systems, and 30% said they'd use them in megawatt-sized projects.

System-level monitoring is also a hot topic. Nearly 70% of respondents said they want monitoring diagnostics down to the string level, and 15% want the ability for individual panels. That points to an opportunity for firms in offering panel-level electronics, says IMS Research senior research director Ash Sharma. Only 1% of PV installations in 2011 used microinverters, but more than 10% of survey respondents "are intending to use microinverters for some of their projects in the next 12-24 months, with an even greater number wanting to use DC-DC power optimizers," he says. Still, more than half of respondents cite higher costs for microinverters and hesitation to adopt what they see as an "unproven" technology.

Even though inverter pricing is expected to fall by 20 percent or even 30 percent over the next three years, "nearly all" expect inverters to incorporate more and improved features and better quality. (More than half, though, indicated they'd pay a premium for just a 1 percent yield gain.) This sentiment is most likely due to customers determining their preferred inverter price based on their overall system budget. "With module and system prices falling rapidly, this inherently puts more pressure on inverter prices to fall too," Gilligan said.

Asian solar PV installs surging, China "blistering"

Thu, 26 Jan 2012 12:00:00 GMT

January 26, 2012 - Asia-Pacific markets together added 2.8GW of solar PV installations in 4Q11 on the way to a total of 6GW for the entire year, an eye-popping 165% growth, thanks in large part to a massive run-up in China's domestic sector, according to calculations from Solarbuzz.

China, which now dominates the regional solar market (not to mention conversations about alleged anticompetitive practices), saw its solar PV capacity skyrocket 500% in 2011 -- roughly 1GW of ground-mount projects in the Qinghai province alone. A planned year-end 13% FiT reduction created a 1.7GW surge in installations in 4Q11 (much like what happened in Germany), helped by lower module prices and favorable project returns. The country now makes up almost half (48%) of Asia's entire solar demand, and its solar PV project pipeline has swelled to 20GW, though the Chinese central government could well step in with policy adjustments to reign in that growth in 2012, notes NPD Solarbuzz analyst Ray Lian. (Still, China could end up passing Germany as the biggest new-PV-capacity country in 2012.)

Asia's next-largest solar PV market, Japan, grew 30% year-over-year to 1.2GW, but with only a slightly higher install rate in 4Q11, heavily slanted (70% share) to residential installs. A new FiT law hoped to spur large-scale PV projects is imminent and spurring development activity, but the legislation's lack of clarity has held back actual project implementation. Also shaping Japan's end market is a "dramatic" influx of foreign module suppliers. Look for Japan's end market to accelerate slightly in 2012, to 40% growth Y/Y, says Solarbuzz.

Also flexing its solar PV muscles is India, seen as a potentially massive solar PV end market (just ask First Solar) thanks largely to its nationwide support via the National Solar Mission and state-level policies (e.g. in Gujarat). PV installs in India more than doubled in 4Q11 (125%) due to, as in other areas, a race to beat turn-of-the-calendar installation deadlines. Rapid PV price declines in 2011 drastically changed the economics for many Indian solar PV projects, though, so many projects have been delayed (Gujarat projects, for example, got a one-month extension) to figure out financial closure, land acquisition, and power evacuation facility issues, notes Solarbuzz analyst Chris Sunsong. Developers are now scrambling to meet installation deadlines or risk losing their PPAs -- meaning that there will be a flurry of activity through January -- more than 600MW in solar PV projects might get grid-connected in 1Q12. Look for India to approach 1GW for all of 2012, he says.

Other emerging markets in Asia -- mainly Thailand, Korea, and Taiwan -- contributed 500MW of demand in 2011, and should add 50% to that in 2012 joined by Malaysia and the Philippines, says Solarbuzz.

One market in Asia isn't faring as well: Australia, the region's third-largest PV market, actually saw installations drop -10% in 4Q11, and Solarbuzz expects another -20% decline in 1Q12 and -30% for all of 2012, following the reduction and elimination of early-year incentive policies "has left many downstream installers stranded with evaporating demand and many firms have ceased operations." (Note that an influx of lower-priced Chinese modules, which lowered overall system costs, also hastened the demise of domestic module maker Silex Solar during 4Q11, though the company is technically calling it a suspension into "care and maintenance mode.") The market should kick in again in 2013 as large-scale ground-mount projects come online, says Solarbuzz.

Asia Pacific solar PV market demand by region in 2011. (Source: Solarbuzz)

One leader, lots of consolidation as CIGS market emerges

Wed, 25 Jan 2012 18:25:00 GMT

January 25, 2012 - 2011 was "a breakout year" for CIGS solar PV as suppliers continued to trim production costs, increase module conversion efficiencies, and widen adoption in commercial rooftops. But while CIGS (and thin-film brethren CdTe, thanks to First Solar's market leadership) continue to press on, the solar PV industry is still very much dominated by silicon, which has more standardized manufacturing on the one end and far more installed capacity on the installation side -- and all-important bankability thanks to both.

CIGS, meanwhile, is still evolving, with a variety of substrates (glass, steel, polyimide) and manufacturing processes e.g. deposition (sputtering, evaporation, inkjet printing), plus variety in the associated equipment. CIGS also faces challenges in lifetime/reliability and bankability. Which, on the flip side, means that CIGS continues to be an area where improvements and innovations in technologies and materials can have a major impact.

Lux Research, in a new report, projects the CIGS market will nearly double to $2.35 billion and 2.3-gigawatt demand in 2015, up from 1.2GW today, as the technology emerges "into an early growth phase." Yet it is emerging in an environment where investments (e.g. venture capital) are hard to come by, and pricing pressure from the silicon side of solar PV continues to compress the cost equation and erode thin-film's advantages. “Strategic partnerships between start-ups and industrial conglomerates are likely to determine this technology’s overall viability and competitiveness,” says Pallavi Madakasira, Lux Research analyst and lead author of the report.

Companies pursuing evaporation CIGS process have a temporary lead in the industry. (Source: Lux Research)

Who has the best chance of achieving escape velocity in CIGS? Lux plots out the players on an "Innovation Grid," above. Some conclusions:

-- It's clear who is expected to assume the mantle as marketplace leader: Solar Frontier is ranked solidly in the grid's Dominant quadrant, and the only firm Lux ranked as "Strong Positive" in its calculations. The company has inroads into new and emerging markets (e.g. 30MW in India), not to mention a recent 150MW module supply deal in the US, and it's got the manufacturing muscle with a 900MW plant in Japan ramped last summer.

-- Consolidation is likely among a group of "bankable players" including Global Solar, Avancis, and Solibro. Global Solar has shown "slow but steady progress" with its PowerFlex technology used in Dow's solar shingles, but "needs to adopt a less conservative approach," Lux says. Avancis has a CIGS module JV with Hyundai Heavy Industries in Asia, and opened a new German factory in December. Solibro, meanwhile, needs to solidify its financial footing (it topped 17.4% aperture efficiency back in November with CIGS test cells).

Along with consolidation, some other players are likely acquisition targets: ISET, Flisom, and AQT all are designated "High Potential," potentially viewed as prize assets due to strong technical value -- but as Lux euphemistically puts it, they suffer from "weaker business execution scores."

-- Besides Solar Frontier, there's a trio of firms that could emerge as CIGS "champions": Stion, Miasole, and Nuvosun (which also is linked to Dow, via funding and as a solar shingle producer). Success for all these firms, Lux says, will depend on a number of factors: capacity utilization and ramp-up, customer relationships and strategic partnerships, and consistent execution across all areas: module costs, yield, and efficiency.

Japan's material makers making improvements to lower solar costs

Wed, 25 Jan 2012 10:00:00 GMT

January 25, 2012 - Japan's solar energy costs are roughly three times higher than coal/gas-sourced energy sources. The nation will institute a FiT plan this year, but proposed renewable energy-friendly legislation is short on some key details. So, like other markets, Japan needs to find other ways to narrow that energy cost gap. And as elsewhere, companies are turning to technology and manufacturing improvements to help lower solar costs, since the earlier in the solar PV supply chain that costs can be trimmed, the more cumulative the end effect to narrow that energy price gap.

The Nikkei daily highlights three such domestic areas of focus:

Antireflective glass. Toray Industries is developing an antireflective glass coating film that helps solar cells capture more sunlight, increasing efficiency by 0.3 to 0.4 percentage points, which translates to 3-4 percent lower power costs. Subsidiary Toray Engineering already has a machine to automatically fix glass warping and coat the glass with the new film. Toray aims to sell both the film and tool to solar glass suppliers, targeting ¥5 billion in sales by 2015.

Backside cell wiring. Toppan Printing is working on material to place wiring on the backside of solar cells instead of the front, to increase the solar panel's effective surface area by several percent (and thus boost overall system output). Prototypes have been sent to solar panel makers, with mass production anticipated "sometime during fiscal 2012."

Sealants. Sekisui Chemical is said to be developing a material that incorporates properties of protective coating and sealant for solar cells, which would eliminate a manufacturing process step and thus lower costs. The company also hopes to start marketing the product sometime this year.

Quantum dots boost cell efficiencies by 45%

Tue, 24 Jan 2012 23:00:00 GMT

January 24, 2012 - The U. of Buffalo (NY) says adding quantum dots into solar cells could increase their efficiency by a whopping 45%. Their research, published in last May in the journal Nano Letters (here's a PDF of the paper), says that embedding quantum dots allows the cells to harvest infrared light, and also increase the lifetime of photoelectrons.

Using quantum dots to boost solar cell efficiency isn't exactly new; it's been investigated for at least the past decade (here's one example). For the Buffalo team, the key appears to be that not only can they embed quantum dots, but they can be selectively doped to contain "a significant built-in charge" (dubbed "Q-BICs"), which forces electrons to keep bouncing around and thus minimizes recombination losses. They also claim the technology can be applied to many different solar PV structures -- their research relied on a InAs/GaAs test device.

Adding two quantum dots increases conversion efficiency by just 4.5%; adding four or six QDs improves efficiency by 30% and 50% respectively -- in the latter, the device went from 9.3% to 14% efficiency.

A spinoff company, OPtoElectronic Nanodevices LLC, has been formed to commercialize the technology, and is currently seeking funding from private investors and federal programs (hence the delayed timing of the PR vs. the published paper). The research was done in conjunction with researchers from both the Air Force Office of Scientific Research and US Army Research Labs.

Hiking solar cell efficiency: Moser Baer, Yingli/Dupont trot their latest numbers

Tue, 24 Jan 2012 18:40:00 GMT

January 24, 2012 - India's Moser Baer says it has adopted a "metal and intrinsic layer semiconductor" (MIST) technology that it says can push its PV cell conversion efficiency to 21% or more. It's unclear precisely where this new MIST technology applies; the company says it's leveraging both c-Si and thin-film module technology, to make the high-efficiency cells. It does specify that the R&D work was done over "the past few years" on "multiple technology platforms" at the company's labs in India and the Netherlands. The company lists capabilities for both c-Si (100MW cells, 90MW modules) and thin-film (50MW modules) solar PV, plus "a few megawatts" for concentrated PV, with plans for expansion.

We've contacted Moser Baer for clarification on what exactly this MIST technology is, how it is being implemented into current manufacturing (with any changes/upgrades), and for any timelines to introduce the improved cells into pilot and volume production. We'll share any details we get.

DuPont, Yingli tout Panda collab

Elsewhere in higher-efficiency cells, DuPont Photovoltaic Solutions and Yingli Green Energy are revealing an ongoing collaboration to push solar cell efficiency and new module manufacturing processes and designs for Yingli's n-type metal wrapthrough Panda technology.

Specifically, the gains made via the DuPont-Yingli collaboration include: integrating DuPont's Solamet PV17x metallization technology with an advanced cell diffusion process, and integrating both customized metallization materials (to boost efficiency) and fluoride films (to improve power output).

Yingli launched its Panda efforts in 2009 in conjunction with the Energy Research Center of the Netherlands (ECN) and Amtech's Tempress subsidiary, aiming to reduce up to 40% metal coverage vs. standard c-Si cells, translating to around a 1.5% gain in relative cell efficiency; it also expects to realize far better cost reductions than with standard mc-Si. In a July 2011 Solarbuzz ranking of top modules, Panda ranked in a tight bunch around 16% efficiency, behind the ~19% panels of SunPower, AUO, and Sanyo; since last September Yingli says it's getting about 19.7% in lab tests.

Germany's BSW: Meetings "constructive" on solar PV cuts vs. caps

Mon, 23 Jan 2012 20:27:00 GMT

January 23, 2012 - After seeing PV installations race past projections in December, which will very likely ratchet up the planned cutbacks in FiTs in 2012 -- 15% in July, plus the 15% in Jan = 30% Y/Y -- German officials are mulling different ways to manage the country's solar PV market to keep the momentum going for integrating renewable energy sources, but without imploding future growth.

On the table are both reduced FiTs and a hard cap on new installations. Economy Minister Philipp Rösler had initially backed a 1GW cap, which Environment Minister Norbert Röttgen opposed in favor of several stepdowns in subsidies, instead of the larger half-year ones.

The Bundesnetzagentur (BSW, Germany's utility and infrastructure regulatory agency) says the latest meeting (Jan. 19) between government officials and German solar industry representatives "was open and constructive," with particular attention paid to how costs have been reduced through both technical innovation and scaling to mass production. A 50% reduction in PV costs over the past three years has been matched by a reduction in subsidies.

Solar currently contributes ~3% of Germany's electricity toward a goal of ~10% by 2020, noted Carsten Körnig, CEO of the German Solar Industry Association, and over the next five years could rise to around 7%, vs. a 2% increase in private electricity tariffs (citing Prognos calculations). And as prices continue to fall faster than subsidies, by 2013-2014 solar could match support levels of large ocean-based wind farms in initial market segments.

Still, both sides have to come to agreement about what to do. One report quotes Rösler criticizing the "glaring disparity" between solar PV's subsidies vs. the power it actually contributes (Handelsblatt says solar gets half of all renewable energy subsidies despite making up barely 3% of renewables' 20% contribution to the grid.). Another says Germany's Energy Agency (DENA) agrees that continued adjustment of the subsidies "is no longer enough."

Where everyone seems to agree is that Germany must maintain its global leadership in both policy and use in solar PV. The BSW points out that "continued robust expansion of the use of solar power is essential" to Germany's energy system, and that it "enjoys broad support from the population at large." And it's becoming even more affordable; Maxim analyst Aaron Chew projects by year's end the projected lowered FiT rate could drop below electricity rates (€0.20/kWh), and "ultimately guide Germany to a grid parity model."

All in & all done: Solyndra auction dropped, Solon on the block

Mon, 23 Jan 2012 14:59:00 GMT

January 23, 2012 - Two solar PV makers are passing in different directions, trying to get at least some money out of shuttered US operations.

Solon is preparing a pitch to prospective buyers this week, with a planned Jan. 23-26 auction to sell off what used to be its Tuscon, AZ-based module manufacturing operation, which the company began phasing out last fall. (Solon's German unit filed for insolvency just before Christmas.) Among items in the lot are two 100MW-capacity Swiss Solar System Models 3S laminators (usable for both c-Si and thin film processes), a 75MW REIS Robotics automated framing module, three REIS 6-axis robots, and a REIS framing station. Secondary equipment reseller Fab-Finder is helping to prepare the items for auction.

While Solon moves along, we find once again solar PV whipping boy Solyndra in the spotlight, having canceled yet another auction after receiving no bids by a Tuesday Jan. 18 deadline. The proposed turnkey sale would have held out hope of maintaining at least some operation; now it looks like the firm will be sold away literally in parts, with the next step a court-approved auction of core assets in piecemeal or grouped by similar type.. A previous auction late last year ended similarly, without drawing desired interest.

The company, which last fall was made the poster child for bad government investments due to its $535M DoE loan guarantee and subsequent nosedive, continues to make headlines for the wrong reasons. Reports surfaced this week that it is actually seeking to pay bonuses to some of its dozen-odd remaining staff, ostensibly to keep them motivated while completing all the legal paperwork for its dismantling. (Not surprisingly, ex-Solyndra workers and pretty much everyone else are decrying the suggestion.)

And a local TV station says it's witnessed remnants of the company's solar manufacturing processes -- "hundreds of thousands" of units specialized glass tubing -- tossed into the garbage, with the explanation (with which the bankruptcy court apparently agrees) that storing the glass is more expensive than it's worth, or could hope to be resold for. (The TV report, though, found some interested researchers and resellers who'd be happy to take some; moreover the actual German glass supplier seems to be unaware of the fate of its supplies.)

Asia solar cell producers rising amid pricing war

Fri, 20 Jan 2012 16:00:00 GMT

January 20, 2012 - Europe may be the big end-market for solar PV demand (at least for now), but from a manufacturing standpoint Asian firms are beginning to dominate.

The top 10 solar cell manufacturers in 3Q11, collectively representing 44% of global production, had a decidedly Asian flavor, according to data compiled by Lux Research. First Solar led the pack, but just barely -- right behind it were the Chinese solar trinity of Suntech, Yingli, and Trina. Other Asia-based suppliers on the list include Taiwan firms Motech and Neo Solar, and despite its name Canadian Solar has most of its operations and production in China and thus its costs and pricing is typical of regional peers.

Company	Cell production in 3Q11	% global
First Solar	551	6%
Suntech Power	546	6%
Yingli Green Energy	431	5%
Trina Solar	370	4%
SunPower	350	4%
Motech	330	4%
Canadian Solar	325	4%
JA Solar	325	4%
Sharp	316	4%
Neo Solar Power	273	3%

Top 10 cell manufacturers in 3Q11, in MW and % of global cell production. (Source: Lux Research)

Both polysilicon production (notably REC) and module production are clearly shifting their gaze toward Asia -- and look for Asian manufacturers to keep rising on the list, eventually surpassing 50% even in the face of trade disputes and possible tariffs, notes Lux Research analyst Fatima Toor.

China is heading to the top not only in solar manufacturing but also as an end-market leader in its own right. Germany, the perennial end-market leader, is expected to bring on a third less new capacity in 2012 (to 5.3GW), leaving the door open for China to surpass it, nearly tripling new capacity installations to 5.5GW.

And here's something else to think about: What does it mean to be among the leaders in solar cell production, when the market is still in severe oversupply? Until end-demand catches up and closes the yawning gap (which could be as much as 20GW), suppliers especially on the upstream end will continue to feel the pressure of a strained market. Manufacturers are selling modules at record- and unsustainably-low ~$1/W to burn inventories, creating a "cut-throat" competitive market, notes Lux.

PV module pricing spiked in December, but back to declines in 2012

Thu, 19 Jan 2012 21:10:00 GMT

January 19, 2012 - Installers "desperate to secure supply and complete installations" ahead of FiT reductions in some key end-markets caused a 7% spike in PV module prices in December, according to IMS Research. Germany, in particular, was a major culprit as it added 3GW in the month alone. But the analyst firm's latest monthly pricing report. which polls PV module pricing from suppliers, integrators, installers and distributors, suggests these pricing increases are only temporary, with both buyers and suppliers expecting price drops again within the month.

Even if temporary, that December price spike was welcomed after price pressures during most of the year; prices in September had eroded by more than a third since the end of 2010. That, compounded by high channel inventories, caused many manufacturers and distributors to write-down inventory and sometimes sell at a loss. Prices of c-Si modules direct from manufacturers were only up by 1% (their first positive month), though on the other end of the chain distributors were able to get as much as a 22% markup on c-Si modules, double the previous month, notes IMS' senior market analyst Sam Wilkinson.

So what does 2012 hold for c-Si module pricing? At least to start, more of the same price pressure seen in 2011. IMS' monthly survey finds that distributors, on average, expect a -4% decline in January -- but their customers expect more than double that amount for the month.

Solar Frontier, enXco making CIGS splash with 150MW deal

Thu, 19 Jan 2012 03:55:00 GMT

January 18, 2012 - CIGS supplier Solar Frontier and renewable energy project developer enXco have signed an eye-popping deal in the world of thin-film solar PV technology: a 150MW module supply deal for enXco's Catalina solar power plant in Kern County, CA. Solar Frontier says it delivered "a firm order" for 26MWp in 4Q11. The first phase (60MWp) is slated to go online by the end of 2012, with the rest coming online by June 2013.

This deal is a "landmark moment" for both Solar Frontier and the CIGS sector, showing how the technology can deliver more KWh over a project's lifetime at lower cost, stated Gregory W. Ashley, COO of Solar Frontier Americas. He see this project as "a launch pad for ever greater CIS achievement in the United States and across the world." Gregory Ashley, VP/COO of Solar Frontier's America operations, tells the Wall Street Journal that up to a third of the company's global business will eventually come from the Americas, and it's looking to possibly open up new manufacturing capacity here as well.

Financially speaking, the Nikkei pegs the value at ~¥20B (US $260M); Bloomberg, citing a Showa Shell source, says ¥10B ($130M). Either way, it not only sweetens the bottom line but also helps offset the continued effects of a punishingly strong yen, the Nikkei notes.

According to SEPA, the biggest completed solar PV project right now is Sempra's Copper Mountain (48MW). Twenty-six solar PV projects are on the board (tracked by SEPA) exceeding ≥150MW, but only five are expected to come online by 2013 at any comparable scale to enXco's project in the Mojave Desert:

- Blythe's Solar Millenium, CA (500MW)
- First Solar's Antelope Valley, CA (230MW)
- SunPower's California Valley / High Plains II (175MW)
- 8 Minute Energy's Mount Signal, CA (139MW)
- Arlington Valley, AZ (125MW)

Solar Frontier, a unit of Showa Shell, has been in the solar business since the 1970s, with a focus on CIS technology for nearly two decades. Among its more recent achievements:

- Last summer it ramped its 900MW Kunitomi plant in Japan, bringing total annual production capacity to 1GW. It also touted new 12.2% efficient 150W modules.
- In November, it completed (with Belectric) a 4.2MW power plant in Bessan, France.
- It had supply deals in India totaling 30MW of installations by the end of 2011.

MEMC tips 4Q11 results, quells Japan project rumors

Wed, 18 Jan 2012 17:37:00 GMT

January 18, 2012 - MEMC is out with two new press releases, one responding to reported major solar project investments in Japan (through its SunEdison business), and the other at teaser at its upcoming 4Q11 results that appear to be better than expected.

First, the 4Q numbers. A month ago MEMC laid out a major revamp including capacity reductions, plant idlings, and a 20% global workforce shedding. Even before calculating the anticipated dent to its 4Q11 books, MEMC thought 4Q11 sales would be down by as much as -40% (to $523M-$585M vs. original expectations of $700M-$1B). and EPS would plunge through the floor (-$5.20 to -$6.38, vs. flat to $0.20).

So now it's something of good news that MEMC is updating its 4Q11 outlook (official numbers will be released on Feb. 15) with some upside: sales of $698M-$733M, though the company didn't clarify just where the extra $150M came from. EPS, now including the big chomp from December's restructuring plus some "largely noncash adverse tax effects associated with world-wide income distribution," is only "slightly" worse, at ($5.20) to ($6.50). All told the restructuring charges and tax impact, plus goodwill impairment, appear to have slammed MEMC for $1.2B-$1.5B during the quarter.

Hammer out those dents, though, and MEMC still reports a net loss of $75M-$88M. The company noted that its numbers were lower "primarily due to solar energy project timing," with interconnects exceeding 100MW in 4Q11 but still falling "short of our expectations."

Speaking of projects, MEMC is going out of its way to quell reports that it's planning major solar power investments in Japan through its SunEdison unit -- even though those reports cite a SunEdison spokesperson as the source. Bloomberg and the local Nikkei [subscription required] cite negotiations to invest ¥350B (US $4.6B) over five years to build solar power plants in Niigata and Fukuoka prefectures "through an Osaka-based tie-up partner" and soliciting Japanese investors. The Nikkei says SunEdison would look at 1MW plants, adding up to 1GW of output over the five-year period.

However, MEMC's official position, stated in a newly issued PR, is that while it is very much interested in the Japanese market, no plans are set at this time because of what it calls "uncertain project economics." Japan is implementing legislation that mandates utilities to procure power from renewable energy sources, but the actual FiT rates haven't been spelled out. And without a FiT rate, the project pricing and costs can't be teased out. "The size of SunEdison's future investment in solar project development in Japan, if any, has not yet been determined," says the company in a statement. And, perhaps with an askew glance at the local SunEdison rep, it adds this: "As the company's plans in this market evolve, appropriate public announcements will be made to keep investors informed."