Crystal Solar to Produce Solar Panels for 50% of the Capital Costs?

Photo Credit:  Some rights reserved by Dmitry Sumin via Flickr.

Around one third of the costs of solar panels go toward the manufacturing of silicon wafers. The process used to create them is complicated and requires a lot of resources.

If you`ve ever seen a monocrystalline solar panel you’ve probably noticed the characteristic shape of the individual cells:

Circular wafers are made somewhat rectangular by cutting their sides. Doing this wastes substantial amounts of silicon.

Crystal Solar has now announced that they have made a new simplified way of manufacturing that will produce solar panels for less than 50% of the capital cost compared to conventional silicon photovoltaic technology.

Their “Direct Gas to Wafer” – technology does not waste about half of the expensive purified silicon it starts with as most conventional technologies do. It also uses less expensive equipment.

Crystal Solar have developed a method that skips the part where highly purified silicon is made (this is where most of the waste happens) and instead derive pure silicon from a gas phase in an earlier stage. The technology has been in used in smaller scales for a long time in the computer chip industry. It uses less than 15% silicon usage compared to conventional silicon photovoltaic technology and the solar cells will still have over 15 percent efficiency.

The Korean company Hanwha SolarOne has invested $15 million in the new manufacturing technique. On top of this, The National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) is backing Crystal Solar with $4 million spread out over the next 1,5 years to fund the development of their new technology. They aim to have a fully functional small-scale pilot plant ready early 2013.

Only a couple of years ago, solar panels for under $1 per watt seemed crazy, which is why many companies put their focus on developing alternative technologies such as thin-film. Solar panels cost have in fact steadily decreased since then and they have reached below $1 per watt. Unfortunately, this has forced many companies in the photovoltaic industry into cutbacks, mergers, and bankruptcy. Let’s hope no companies fall through the cracks this time.

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