Solar company Siva Power has announced a new technology roadmap that projects the cost of its thin film solar modules dropping to a record low of $0.28/watt.
The company says that its advanced manufacturing approach means projected costs are geography-agnostic, and can be achieved in China, the United States or any other location. The company expects to be in production within four years, with a 300-MW-capacity facility.
"Silicon photovoltaic (PV) technology still relies on brute force replication of small production lines. The next wave of solar will require advanced manufacturing, high-speed automated production lines based on thin film PV," said Brad Mattson, CEO of Siva Power.
Through its SunShot initiative, the US Dept. of Energy (DOE) has set a cost goal of solar modules of under $0.50/watt by 2020. Using a Siva-derived cost model, similar to the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) cost model, Siva Power's team of scientists and engineers determined that the company's technology will be able to produce ultra-low cost solar panels at $0.28/watt. The analysis reflects a detailed, bottoms-up, cost calculation for the manufacturing process. For each manufacturing process step, all cost elements - including labor, electricity, spare parts, materials, consumables, water, gas and overhead – are added together to figure out the total processing cost ($/m2).
Siva Power says a critical element for achieving low cost is using glass as a substrate, which has already been scaled in the FPD industry and much of the necessary equipment is essentially off-the-rack. By comparison, silicon substrate scales poorly because of the fragility of the wafer, and silicon fab lines are unlikely to scale much more in the future. The only way to expand silicon capacity is to build lots of small lines, which offers little if any cost savings.
Besides its choice of CIGS material and glass substrate, Siva Power has also selected 300MW as the best scale for module production, or about 10 times the capacity of the typical silicon production line. By taking advantage of the high-speed automated tools already developed for the FPD industry, only minimal adaptation is needed to achieve 300MW throughputs in solar, ensuring cost reductions and avoiding execution risk.
The company’s roadmap plans to reach $0.40/watt with just one fully operational 300-MW production line. This would be much lower than competitive CIGS companies (~$0.74/watt), but more importantly lower than the best silicon production lines in China ($0.55-0.70/watt). Moreover, after two years of operation with just a few improvements in performance, the module cost will come down to $0.28/watt.
Siva Power's strategy is about engineering execution and advanced manufacturing technology. The company's automated 300-MW production line greatly reduces the impact of labor, factory and land costs. As the factory aims to require just one-third of the space and one-fifth the labor of a silicon line (when normalized for output), its labor, overhead and depreciation will be well below the competition. Capex, for example, is only $0.33/watt (as opposed to ~$1/watt for most companies).
As a result, Siva Power can manufacture solar panels in the United States at lower cost than they are currently being made in China.
Another company that believes glass is the future of solar power is Solar Roadways, a startup that has developed a modular paving system of glass solar panels that can be installed on areas such as roads, parking lots, sidewalks and playgrounds, and generate electricity to power homes and businesses connected via driveways and parking lots. Such a system could become a reality — the company raised over $2.2 million (over 220% of its goal) in startup capital on Indiegogo last month.
Speaking of crowdfunding solar projects, in January Mosaic launched a New Year’s Resolution campaign to “Put Solar on It.” The campaign invites anyone to pledge to put solar on a local home, school, place of worship, business or other property on PutSolarOnIt.com. Throughout 2014, Mosaic will provide people with the tools and network they need to make their pledge a reality.
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Founder & Principal Consultant, Hower Impact
Mike Hower is the founder of Hower Impact — a boutique consultancy delivering best-in-class strategic communication advisory and support for corporate sustainability, ESG and climate tech.
Published Jul 5, 2014 10pm EDT / 7pm PDT / 3am BST / 4am CEST