photos: Applied Materials
It’s been almost a year since Applied Materials – the Silicon Valley company that is the world’s biggest manufacturer of the machines that make computer chips and flat-screen video displays – announced it was jumping into the booming solar energy business. It was a natural fit – most solar technology is silicon based and the Applied (AMAT) machines that churn out video displays can, with a few modifications, produce thin-film solar panels. And tools used to make the chips in your laptop can be reconfigured to make wafers for solar cells. Applied’s move into the solar market promises to lower the cost of solar electricity. How? By standardizing and improving the solar manufacturing process, much as the company did for the semiconductor industry, allowing companies like Intel (INTC) and Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) to produce ever-cheaper chips that made laptops and mobile phones mass commodities.
So Green Wombat recently headed down the 101 to pay a visit to Charlie Gay, a solar industry veteran who runs Applied’s Solar Business Group, for a Year One update and to take a look at the company’s big metal. An avuncular exec, Gay began his solar career more than three decades ago at Boeing subsidiary Spectrolab. He subsequently joined Arco Solar and worked at its various incarnations and later served as director of the U.S. government’s National Renewable Energy Laboratory. He recently chaired solar-cell maker SunPower’s (SPWR) advisory board.
Things are growing very rapidly, both for the solar industry as well as for Applied, says Gay at the companys Santa Clara campus. In the first quarter of the year the company forecast its solar business would sign $200 million in contracts in 2007. By the second quarter, it raised that estimate to $400 million, and last week during the third quarter earnings call, CEO Mike Splinter upped the ante to more than $600 million.
The reason for the optimism is Applieds growing thin-film solar business. So far this year it has signed contracts to build thin-film production lines for half a dozen solar companies in Europe and India. Unlike traditional solar panels, thin-film manufacturing involves depositing photovoltaic materials on large and slender pieces of glass or flexible material. Though not as efficient at converting photons into electrons as standard solar cells, the promise of thin-film is that will be cheaper to produce. (Unlike thin-film solar startups like Nanosolar, which are developing next-generation technology based on copper indium gallium diselenide, or CIGS, Applied’s clients use an older amorphous silicon-based process.) "What we’ve done is lay out production lines for thin-film solar," says Gay. "One advantage we bring is integrating the tools with the production process in a solar factory." The aim is to cut the cost per watt of solar electricity by designing smooth-running and efficient factories.
Over at another Applied building I don a lab coat, booties and safety glasses – not quite the full-on bunny suit – and Teresa Trowbridge, an Applied senior manager in the solar group, takes me on a tour of the massive clean room where Applied builds its equally massive flat-panel manufacturing machines (photo above). Sheets of glass as large as 7 by 8 feet (2.2 by 2.5 meters) are fed into the AKT Gen 8.5 and layers of semiconductors and circuitry are applied. Once the machines are tweaked to handle thicker thin-film glass and a couple of other mechanical changes are made, they can use the same process to produce solar panels.
CIGS thin-film would seem to threaten Applied’s silicon-based thin-film market. But Gay says CIGS thin-film processes still use layers of amorphous silicon – layers that can be deposited by Applied machines. "It grows our market," he says of efforts by startups like Nanosolar and Miasole. Applied also makes tools that can be used in the production of crystalline silicon wafers for traditional solar panels. The company has not yet done any big wafer deals but Gay hinted that some may be in offing. "There’s a real renaissance of solar," he says.
Green Wombat 
Sounds like the same exact process and design that XsunX (Symbol: XSNX) is developing. They recently announced major news that they are building a manufacturing facility for thin film solar cells that they will supply to users…as well as building the manufacturing processes that they will market to companies also.
This company has big things in its future. 2008 and 2009 should be big!!
PS: From what I read, they are announcing the manufacturing plant location in the next month or so.
http://biz.yahoo.com/prnews/070820/clm076.html?.v=68
Why is everyone so reluctant to post anticipated costs of solar production of energy? What confidence can I have in a company that doesn’t divulge such a critical piece of information–How much per kilowatt hour??
Why is everyone so reluctant to post anticipated costs of solar production of energy? (questions Howard)
The cost of solar power is well known and confidently projected to decrease due to cost reductions closely associated with chip making economies that Applied knows well.
The 2005 cost of solar modules is $2.7/W, down from 3.89/W in 2000 and 4.9/W in 95. Its proablably around $ 2.2 today. Applied is betting that thin film technology will produce a step function decrease in cost, but they are not depending on it (since they can produce conventional modules as well)
Todd Woody, you write the way a Southern California import talks with that “the 101” slang. Drop the definite article. It’s “headed down 101”.
I did an internship with a group that developed solar cells. There is a problem of cost, but the biggest gap that manufacturers are up against is the efficiency of the cells. Back in 2000, efficiency was around 13% which is horrible. NASA had efficiencies around 35%, still horrible, but a step upward. What is it today?
Someone asked about the efficiency for Applied’s modules. They’re promising 6% when they sell a factory. The person who said “35% is horrible” is way off base. Energy conversion at 35% is great. Check out internal combustion engines.
Cost to make thin film silicon by Applied machines or competitors is expected to be about $1.50 per watt in big quantity. If they can get it down to $1 per watt by economy of scale or higher efficiency (9%), then it will cost about the same as grid supplied power.
I’m pretty sceptical about the AMAT process. Efficiency of 6% ? and no HARD numbers that I’ve ever seen as to how much it will REALLY cost to produce a watt of power (somebody post me a link for the cost calculations).
Anybody ever notice that Sunpower hasn’t shown much interest yet. They have 22% efficient cells, but it’s hard to tell what their cost per watt is because, like so many others, they’re not telling.
One company that is telling is LDK Solar in China. They have 16% efficient cells and a current cost of production of $1.29 which they are projecting to drop to ~ $0.50 to $0.60 by 2010 when they have upped their output to 1.6 gigawatts per year (the cost of silicon will probably come down dramatically as more capacity comes on-line over the next 3 years — I don’t have calculations on this yet).
Then there’s the fellow who says he’s increased silicon cell efficiencies by coating them with silicon nanoparticles http://www.renewableenergyaccess.com/rea/news/story?id=49718&src=rss
It all makes me wonder if by the time thin-film gets their act together that Silicon will be so far ahead (as a business with customers and a sales and distribution network)that thin-film will never really catch up, not until they solve MANY problems, and no one knows when that will happen because that’s the way it is with things that have never been done before…biotechnology and materials science have this problem in common.
The problem isn’t efficiency per se: even at 5% efficiency there’s enough rooftops in the United States to provide most if not all of our electricity. The Sun provides 10,000 times our total energy requirements from all power sources. You’d have to go WAY down the efficiency scale not to be able to make that up from solar energy.
The problem is and always has been relative cost. Except in limited local applications it is still cheaper to generate KW’s from coal, nuclear, or most other enercy sources than direct solar power. The next generation of PVs will be the first to cost about as much or perhaps a bit less than “conventional” energy sources when tied to the grid. One more breakthrough beyond what’s coming online in the next year and you’d have to be crazy not to put panels as a standard feature of all new construction.
Actually efficiency is currently just as important as cost. I could buy ten panels at 200w each for 4.50 per watt or fifty panels at 40w each for 3.00 per watt. The cost of installing all the extra panels would offset all my savings. Aten solar currently offers the 40 watt panels.
dear sir
we want buy machinery for making solar panel.
did you made this michinery ??
sir,
i want to buy solar machine..
where can i buy it?
[…] solar arrays. Then the world’s biggest chip-equipment maker, Applied Materials (AMAT), retooled machines that make flat-screen video displays to produce thin-film solar panels. And just this month, Hewlett-Packard (HPQ) unveiled a deal to license solar technology to a solar […]