It’s world leader in lightweight solar products

High-tech potential has met with commercial success at Global Solar, a Tucson company that manufactures thin-film photovoltaic devices that harness the power of the sun.

Global Solar makes flexible, lightweight products that convert sunlight into electricity for hikers, campers, travelers and the military around the world, and provides its technology to manufacturers of rigid solar panels.

Outdoor adventurers can purchase the firm’s folding portable solar chargers locally to keep such electronic devices as cell phones, music players and cameras operational in the wild.

Global Solar has reduced the cost of solar by dramatically improving the manufacturing process and solar conversion efficiency of Copper Indium Gallium diSelenide thin-film solar devices, said Mike Gering, Global Solar president and chief executive.

The company is leading the world in the flexible CIGS thin-film arena, boasting production-line solar conversion efficiencies – which measure how much of the sun’s energy is converted into electricity – to greater than 10 percent, he said. Gering remembers when – not so long ago – posting solar conversion efficiencies of 3.5 percent was cause for celebration.

Thin-film devices are less expensive than the commonly used crystalline silicon panels, said Jeff Britt, Global Solar’s chief technology officer. A 100-watt thin-film device would cost about 30 percent less than a 100-watt silicon panel, he said.

Producing thin-film devices a challenge
Finding a way to consistently produce efficient thin-film solar devices has been a technological challenge that to date only Global Solar has met, Britt said.

The company – founded in 1996 by Tucson Electric Power Co. and ITN Energy Systems Inc. of Denver – turned a successful lab experiment into a successful commercial operation, he said.

“This is where the technology comes out of the lab and into the marketplace,” John Benner of the Department of Energy’s National Renewable Energy Laboratory, said during a recent visit to Global Solar.

“Speed and growth is what the PV industry is all about,” Benner said, referring to photovoltaic technology.

Global Solar has sold all the CIGS devices it can produce in 2008, and 80 percent of 2009′s production, – triple this year’s amount – is already sold, Gering said.

The company will post revenues of more than $25 million this year, and 2009 revenues are expected to be substantially more than double that, he said.

Plans call for the company to expand its local production output – above its 4.2 megawatts sold in 2007 – by 33 times in the next few years, Gering said.

The company is in the process of moving into a new 110,000 square-foot facility at 8500 S. Rita Road that is three times the size of its old manufacturing plant. It employs 180 people, mostly in high-tech positions.

The remaining production volume increase will come from improved manufacturing process efficiencies, he said.

TEP’s initial investment in Global Solar was $5 million, and TEP and parent company UniSource Energy Corp. spent $80 million on research and development to try to commercialize the technology, UniSource CEO James S. Pignatelli said.

“We did not make a profit on this. We were spending a lot of R&D money to develop the technology,” Pignatelli said, referring to research and development. “We were still developing the product.”

The company was sold for $16 million in 2006 to Solon AG, a German solar module manufacturer, and I-Sol Ventures GmbH, a European investment company.

“We took the technology as far as we could. I wish we could have stayed with it,” Pignatelli said, “but it was getting too expensive.

“We’re pleased they are going to make it commercially and keep jobs in Tucson,” he said.

Within two weeks of the sale, the new owners were reviewing plans to expand the operation, Gering said.

A $100 million investment by the new owners funded the new Tucson manufacturing plant, faster, more efficient production devices and launched a sister manufacturing plant in Berlin, he said.

The first growth phase will see production capacity increase from 4.2 megawatts to 40 megawatts here, with another 35 megawatts coming on line in Germany, Gering said.

Phase 2 will bring an additional 100 megawatts of production to Tucson, bringing the firm’s local total to 140 megawatts, he said.

To put things in perspective, Britt said that 5 megawatts will power about 1,000 typical Tucson homes.

Power away from electrical grid
Flexible solar devices offer power away from the electric grid, Gering said.

Applications include devices to charge batteries for the military in the field, lightweight foldable panels to charge electronic devices such as cell phones, cameras, camcorders and music players for travelers and for outdoor use, Gering said.

Tucson-based Summit Hut has carried Global Solar’s Sunlinq foldable solar panels for 1 1/2 years, said Sharon Scott, the store’s buyer.

“Everybody is wired these days,” Scott said. “It is a simple, dependable power source.”

Travelers can pack a foldable, lightweight solar panel to charge their electronics, rather than 3 or 4 pounds of power source chargers and plugs, she said. “This is incredibly lightweight and compact.”

And people trekking far from an outlet can still charge their cell phones if they want to connect with society, she said.

The Sunlinq products have a regulator to prevent overcharging or draining an electronic device, she said. Summit Hut sells two sizes – 6.5 watt for $99 and 12 watt for $195 – and Global Solar offers larger ones to power laptops and larger-drain devices.

“They are great products. We are happy with the sales we have here,” said Scott, who declined to discuss specific sales numbers.

About 1 percent of Global Solar’s output goes for flexible devices, Gering said. The remainder goes to companies making rigid solar modules and to firms looking at solar integration.

Already an industry leader, Global Solar is focused on the future. The firm is working to push the efficiency of solar devices to 14 percent and beyond and continues to develop ways to improve manufacturing efficiencies and cut costs, Gering said.

And integrating Global Solar’s devices into rooftop materials would open a worldwide market, he said. “The building industry could be the Holy Grail for us.”

The company is in the process of installing a 750 kilowatt solar field on 6 acres adjacent to the Tucson plant. It will be the largest CIGS solar field in the world when completed, he said.

Despite huge advances, solar power will not soon do away with coal and gas fired generating plants that now provide grid power, Britt said.

Cost is the main issue, he said, with solar power running 30 cents to 40 cents per kilowatt hour, while local grid power goes for about 9 cents per kWh.

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How are panels made? Here’s the skinny
Global Solar’s products start as rolls of stainless steel, 2,000 feet long, 1 foot wide and one- thousandth of an inch thick. The material is similar in thickness to aluminum foil.

A coating of molybdenum is “sputtered” – spray painted in a vacuum chamber – onto both sides of the stainless steel substrate.

The next step – the addition of the CIGS layer is the most critical, said Jeff Britt, Global Solar’s chief technology officer.

Copper, indium, gallium and diSelenide are heated to boiling in a vacuum chamber. The roll of material is run through the chamber, and the vapors condense onto the cooler material, Britt said.

The thickness and correct proportion of the ingredients is crucial to the successful operation of the solar devices being produced.

A new manufacturing device, made to Global Solar’s specifications by General Plasma Inc. in Tucson, allows the substrate to move through the process twice as fast while offering a more accurate disposition of CIGS on the material than earlier machines used by Global Solar, Britt said.

“This is the heart of our intellectual property,” he said.

The next step sees the material coated with cadmium sulfide.

The CIGS layers is were the electric production takes place, he said.

The sun’s energy is converted into electricity when solar photons are absorbed by the solar material, freeing electrons to move from one area to another, which produces an electrical current.

The next manufacturing step sees a transparent conductive oxide applied to the material.

This material as well as the molybdenum layer work as conductive “wires” to carry the electricity.

The material is then printed with grids of silver ink, forming circuits that can efficiently route the electrical current produced by the device.

The 1-foot-wide rolls are next split into three rolls 100 millimeters wide.

The final manufacturing device, called the stringer, sees the material cut apart into segments 100 by 210 millimeters. Foil wires are attached to connect the positive side of one segment to the negative side of the adjoining segment, and so on.

The cells are joined into a 2-meter-long segment containing 18 connected cells.

The finished product is shipped to customers for integration into products or to an assembly plant in Sonora, Mexico, where flexible products are made, Gering said.

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GLOSSARY

Watt, kilowatt and megawatt are measures of electrical power:

• A kilowatt is 1,000 watts

• A megawatt is 1,000 kilowatts or 1 million watts

• A kilowatt equals about 1.34 horsepower

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