In the world’s single-largest investment in solar technology, the oil-rich emirate of Abu Dhabi announced Wednesday it will spend $2 billion to jumpstart a home-grown photovoltaics industry. The cash will fund what is undoubtedly the planet’s best-financed startup, Masdar PV, which will build manufacturing facilities in Germany and Abu Dhabi to produce thin-film solar modules that can be used in rooftop solar systems or solar power plants.
Masdar PV is the latest project of the Masdar Initiative, Abu Dhabi’s $15 billion renewable energy venture designed to transform the emirate into a green technology powerhouse. Masdar is best known for its plans to build Masdar City, a “zero-carbon, zero-waste” urban center.
Thin-film solar cells are essentially “printed” on glass or flexible metals, allowing them to be integrated into building materials like roofs and walls. Though thin-film solar is less efficient at converting light into electricity, it uses a fraction of the expensive silicon needed by conventional bulky solar modules and can be produced much more cheaply – provided economies of scale are achieved.
Thus Masdar PV’s big solar bet. “You have to be working at scale to drive costs out of the system,” Steve Geiger, Masdar’s director of special projects, told Fortune in a phone call from Abu Dhabi. “We have to do it at scale and we have to do it in volume in multiple markets.”
One of those markets is the United States, where Masdar PV could give established players like First Solar (FSLR) and startups such as Nanosolar, Heliovolts and Global Solar some formidable competition.
The gamble Masdar PV is taking is that it’s investing billions in an older but proven thin-film technology that may well be left in the dust by more exotic, cheaper and efficient technologies under development by a host of startups.
Masdar PV aims to have a gigawatt of annual production capacity in place by 2014. To get there, Geiger says the company has hired a management team that includes former top executives from First Solar and other thin-film industry veterans.
A leading solar technology company that Geiger declined to identify will provide the manufacturing equipment for Masdar PV’s factories. Judging from his description, the likely supplier is Applied Materials (AMAT), the world’s biggest computer-chip equipment maker that has a burgeoning business building the machines that make thin-film solar cells of the type that Masdar PV will produce.
“We usually partner with large companies that have managerial skills, technology and market access, but we were very fortune that we picked up a top management team and thought it was strong enough to do as a 100% Abu Dhabi Masdar company,” says Geiger, who will oversee Masdar’s thin-film solar venture.
Masdar PV’s first plant is scheduled to go online in Germany toward the end of 2009 with the second to begin production in Abu Dhabi by mid-2010. “Very clearly we need to look at expansion beyond those two physical facilities,” Geiger says. “We really have to look at America and the Asian markets as well.
Thin-film is just one of three solar strategies that Masdar is pursuing by funneling petrodollars into green energy startups. In March, Masdar unveiled Torresol Energy, a joint venture with a Spanish company that will build large-scale solar thermal power plants to supply electricity to utilities. Masdar has also made investments in other solar thermal companies as well as thin-film startups pursuing different technologies. Finally, Masdar wants to produce polysilicon, the basic material of conventional solar cells.
As Masdar chief Sultan Ahmed Al Jaber recently told Green Wombat, “We want to cover the whole value chain – from research to labs to manufacturing to the deployment of technologies.”
Geiger uses an analogy for Masdar’s green energy ambitions that may be more familiar to petroleum-dependent Americans – and should serve as a wake-up call to get serious about carbon-free energy. “The model might be the vertically integrated oil industry,” he says. “It clearly makes sense to have a consolidated power provider.”
Green Wombat 
This is a great wave for the future…truly, the sun’s energy is free…a smart way of harnessing it.
Wish more could afford such endeavours…like third world countries that do need this kind of technologies most.
This is a great way of preserving the sun’s natural resources.
You have to be pretty stupid to think that solar power will make any differnce in real energy consumption of the world. Oil is ‘concentrated’ energy, solar is ‘dilute’. Yes, its free, but because it is so dilute, you can only use it for trivial applications. Good for the german company that is selling old stuff to the arabs 🙂
Sanoran, people said the same thing about wind power and wind developers are laughing all the way to the bank. All you have to do is extrapolate the declining cost curves for solar, particularly solar thermal and it’s high probability that in the future this will be one of the most economical sources of energy. The Gulf Countries are smart enough to see this and hedge their bets.
Even with all their subsidies, new fossil fuel plants are having a hard to competing with wind power on price. Fossil fuels as a category receive around 30 times more subsidies than alternatives.
Yes. It is diluted now but there are/will be technologies (grids) to store them and eventually to make these dilute levels grow up to a strong supplier of power needs. But can you light a whole town with it? I am not sure.
Here’s an analogy: Sure, internet technology (use of email only between universities) was very dilute. As the internet started scaling up (with killer apps), the submarine cables and satellites are laid out to keep scaling for the growing internet needs. However have we been able to service a whole city – yes and no.
I agree, the German company did the right thing in selling and move on to the next.
Watch as america tries to hold on to the old technology and the people that stand to lose the most invest heavily in solar power.
I can hear the sucking sound as first the pull al liquid equity out of the U.S. and then start to buy it wholesale as we give our power grid away due to greed!
Because the lobby groups are holding any renewable technology here back.
More solar everyday. Will this replace the big power plant. No but will it stop the growth of the pollution makers? Yes. As any technology it will take a while to become efficent but think of what this will do for production and R and D? Soon with this thin film we can cover our cars with them and have it charge them as we drive and only need gas as a back up on rainy days.
Dear Ladies and Gentlemen!
The oil price remains above 130 USD, Europeans and Northern Americans heating their homes with Gas and Oil could face the most expensive winter ever.
Nevertheless, the Energy revolution has begun. The Solar Millennium has eventually been unleashed, let’s transform this world and its markets:
Water for the deserts of Africa and America, Power for the People; Energy Revolution, Solar Millennium !
The latter is also the name of a company building solar power plants, awarded with the ENERGY GLOBE AWARD in the category Fire[1] . This company currently builds the first real utility scale solar-thermal power plants in Spain.
The German Magazine “Der Spiegel” wrote “How Europa gets rid of Coal and Gas”[2] and “That’s how Oil becomes redundant for the USA”[3]
and refers to visions that can become reality in the next decade.
And it can be achieved by building parabolic mirrors in sunny regions to produce steam to run a turbine and power generation.
These solar thermal power plants are running so efficient today, that soon economies of scale will allow them to replace traditional energy production.
Remaining process heat can be used to for sea-water desalination. Hence the ideal spots for such power plants – sunny and not too far from the sea – are usually in need for drinking water.
Parabolic mirror power plants, as those built in Spain, accumulate energy in molten salt tanks and are able to produce power also during the night time. The turbines run 7,5 hours after sunset and cloudy periods are bridged.
With a co-firing of 10%-20% and with reasonable financing continuous power production and cost effectiveness may be achieved today, especially at utility scale.
They are hence “fuel multipliers”, whereas utility scale photo voltaic power and wind wind power are just “fuel savers”
– “Sun gone, Wind away: No more Power”.
To realize solar powered two digit percent fractions of energy production in Europe or the USA or to power entire cities, one can only build utility scale solar thermal power plants in the earth’s sun belt.
The power transport is not a big problem any more as high voltage DC-Transmissions just loose 3% per 1000km.
[1] *http://tinyurl.com/6n74mq*
[2] *http://tinyurl.com/4hyzpf*
[3] *http://tinyurl.com/6m6vsr*
Oil comes from the decomposed remains of prehistoric algea and other organisms. As such, its energy is simply stored sunlight. Solar energy could replace all of our fossil fuel needs, it will just take an enormous effort.
If this article is to be believed, they will be using technology from Applied Materials, (AMAT). AMAT is an American, not Germany company. Masdar’s first production facility is going to be in Germany, presumably using AMAT’s technology.
The text states nowhere that Applied Material (AMAT) is a German company, although around 50 % of AMAT’s equipment for producing thin film solar cells is developed and produced in their German subsidary. In addition, Applied materials does not produce solar cells, but instead is producing the machines to build them. And it’s also just a guess from the author that Applied Materials will deliver the equipment for Masdar PV. My understanding of the text is that Masdar PV want’s to build the first fab in Germany to take advantage of the big solar know how there and after they have gained enough knowlede they will produce the next fab home at Abu Dhabi.
Transition to renewable, clean energy is truly one of our greatest challenges and (I believe) will be one of our greatest triumphs.
Bravo to any company and government with the foresight and wisdom to value investments in this transition.
Who will lead? Who will be the innovators?
This is an exciting time for all !!
What’s funny is that it takes so much oil and resources to create these alternatives
Very interesting series of articles that you have been posting lately. This shift of big oil to venture into wind and solar is amazing. It shows that they want to remain in the power and energy business, and to me it would seem that they have started to realize that the oil will eventually run out. Or, maybe they know something we don’t. The fuels area is definately changing, I wonder how quickly it will occur.
MJ @ dyslexicresearch.blogspot.com
Children, Children please.
The only way the avoid overpaying, now that governments are in business for business, is to do it yourself and your neighbours. And let your neighbours do it for you.
Government and business now know you are completely dependent on them and as helpless as a baby. You are powerless if you continue your current lifestyle. At least a baby has massive and flexible development possibilities. You have none of those advantages.
Back in the day, before TV and other such vapid mediums conned the West into thinking that the television is the community and the culture, neighbours helping neighbours was the essense of the definition of culture and community.
Now back behind the bars of your Gated Apartment Homes with all the amenities.
If the Arabs can supplant oil for their domestic needs they can sell more. Notice that the Arabian Penisula is one of the most productive regions for solar.