Thin film solar vendor First Solar (FSLR) is experiencing a rejuvenated stock price and looking to rejuvenate its cadmium telluride (CdTe) photovoltaic solar module technology.
As Raffi Garabedian, First Solar's CTO, told us last year, "We've been focused on growth in the last few years -- we're now entering a time to really move the needle to accelerate performance."
First Solar has had a modest but consistent ramp in conversion efficiency of roughly 0.1 or 0.2 percentage point per quarter. It doesn't sound like a lot, but it starts to add up over time. The average line conversion efficiency for First Solar's modules was 12.7 percent in the third quarter of this year, up 0.9 percent year-to-year and the firm finished 2012 at a consolidated efficiency of 12.8 percent.
Module manufacturing cost was $0.67 per watt (not including the German factory) in the third quarter. That cost number should drop below $0.60 per watt in late 2013 according to the CEO.
SunPower (SPWR) has high efficiency c-Si panels north of 20 percent while the c-Si panels from vendors like Yingli and Trina are in the 15 percent to 18 percent range.
In First Solar's most recent earnings call, the firm noted:
- Improvements in the semiconductor absorber material through changes in deposition technology -- with full volume production beginning in mid-2013.
- A module design change that will reduce active area losses and improve uniformity -- second half of 2013.
- Improvements to the back contact of the module -- second half of 2014
First Solar set a new world record for CdTe PV module efficiency with a 14.4 percent total area efficiency last year. That mark came after First Solar hit a CdTe solar cell efficiency of 17.3 percent. Both records were set at the firm's Perrysburg, Ohio factory.
So there's headroom and the potential to give c-Si a run for its money on efficiency. But First Solar has to keep hammering on the potential of the CdTe materials system, as well as the other pieces of the module stack, such as the Transparent Conductive Oxide (TCO) and the back contact.
As a testament to First Solar's desire to improve performance and cost, the firm announced a partnership with Intermolecular (Nasdaq:IMI) last year and has just announced a two-year collaboration and licensing agreement aimed at increases in conversion efficiency.
"The combinatorial approach to material and process screening has shown promise to augment First Solar's already world-leading research and development capabilities in CdTe solar technology," said Garabedian in a statement.
Intermolecular uses a combinatorial experiment technology that comes out of biotech firm Symx. First Solar looks to Intermolecular's High Productivity Combinatorial (HPC) platform to help develop more advanced, CdTe-based PV manufacturing processes. Intermolecular acts as an R&D accelerator, and in turn, Intermolecular typically gets a royalty from products sold that were developed with its technology -- although First Solar did not divulge the exact nature of the partnership.
We spoke with Raffi Garabedian about the partnership. Garabedian said, "The device we make is a semiconductor junction and very similar to a CMOS device -- and you can imagine that Intermolecular's process expertise could be turned to PV."
Higher efficiencies will reduce area-related costs and eliminate the balance of system penalty. According to a GTM Research model, CdTe must sell for $0.12 to $0.16 per watt less just to compensate for the BoS penalty.
Intermolecular's claim to fame is its ability to do many experiments on a single wafer -- up to 72 experiments per cycle. These are essentially miniaturized and site-isolated experiments. As an example, a wafer can be run with 18 different silicon wafer texturing processes, each with four different passivation techniques.
In a project that would take another company months to complete and likely tax its analytical capabilities, Intermolecular can have a throughput of hundreds of uniquely characterized solar cells per week. Intermolecular has the flexibility to change gases, targets, chemistries and integration schemes. This is combined with automated probing and an "Informatics" software system that in many ways is similar to the techniques employed in biotech.
Intermolecular has worked on projects aimed at improving alkaline texturing of monocrystalline silicon wafers and developing a more durable, lower-cost antireflective coating for PV glass.
Garabedian added, "Cadmium telluride is still in its infancy, and First Solar has just scratched the surface. We've been focused on growth in the last few years -- we're now entering a time to really move the needle to accelerate performance."
Craig Hunter, Sr. VP of Global Sales and Marketing, echoed Garabedian, saying, "What we exist to do here is accelerate learning curves. Look at the headroom on the CdTe device -- there is tremendous opportunity to improve. CdTe is still an immature technology -- like most of PV."