Low-cost Solar Power Lighting up the Grid

Published May 2008

Mechanical engineering Professor W.S. Sampath, one of the leading researchers in solar technology, is helping to move Colorado State into mass production of high-efficiency, low-cost solar panels.

Sampath

W.S. Sampath, CSU Mechanical Engineering Professor

Sampath, who has spent the past 16 years perfecting the technology, has fine-tuned a continuous, automated manufacturing process for solar panels that uses glass coating with a cadmium telluride thin film instead of the standard high-cost crystalline silicon. Because the process produces high-efficiency devices at a high rate and yield, manufacturing will be cheaper than current methods.

Ava Solar Inc.

AVA Solar Inc. soon will start production on the pioneering, patented technology, bringing about 500 jobs to the region and potentially providing light and power for billions in the underdeveloped world.

Cost to consumers could be as low as $2 per watt, about half the current cost of solar panels and competitive with cost of power from the electrical grid in many parts of the world.

Solar Technology

Annual global sales of photovoltaic technology have grown to about 2 gigawatts, or two billion watts — roughly a $6 billion industry. Demand has increased nearly 40 percent per year for each of the past five years, a trend that industry experts see as continuing. By 2010, solar cell manufacturing is expected to be a $25 billion-plus industry.

"This technology offers a significant improvement in capital and labor productivity and overall manufacturing efficiency," says Sampath, director of CSU's Materials Engineering Laboratory.

Colorado State's Office of Economic Development and the Northern Colorado Economic Development Corp. have supported the startup, and the Colorado State University Research Foundation holds equity in the company as part of a licensing arrangement.

Key advantages of the technology

Key advantages of AVA Solar’s technology that will enable one of the lowest costs of production in the industry include:

  • Simple manufacturing process - fully automated and continuous production with no batch processing yielding high throughputs or production rates;
  • High yields - enabled by tightly controlled process parameters;
  • Low waste – less than 2 percent of the materials used in production need to be recycled;
  • Inexpensive, efficient raw materials - because they convert solar energy into electricity more efficiently, cadmium telluride solar panels require 100 times less semiconductor material than high-cost crystalline silicon panels.