Two Thin-Film Solar Efficiency Records Broken Last Week

Renewable Energy World
First Solar, one of the world’s largest thin-film PV companies, announced that it set a world record for cadmium-telluride (CdTe) PV cells, converting 20.4 percent of the sun’s energy into electricity. The cell was built at the company's Perrysburg, Ohio, factory. (...)
Stion announced that it produced a 23.2 efficient copper indium gallium (di)selenide (CIGS)-based thin-film cell. This technology puts it within striking range of the most-efficient silicon-based PV cells. The company said it’s already scaled this technology at or above 20.0 percent efficiency on a prototype module (20 cm x 20 cm) and anticipates that it will soon be able to scale it to a larger module. (...)
[T]hin-film embraces a variety of technologies, they’re at different levels of efficiency but all are competing to catch up with silicon PV, which is led as of February 2014 by Panasonic, which has produced silicon cells that convert 24.7 percent of the sun’s energy into electricity.

Empa reaches 20.4% efficiency with flexible CIGS solar PV cell

SolarServer
On January 17th, 2013 Swiss Federal Laboratories for Materials Science and Technology (Empa, Zürich, Switzerland) announced that it has achieved a world record 20.4% efficiency with a copper indium gallium diselenide (CIGS) solar photovoltaic (PV) cell on a flexible substrate.
The new record was verified by the Fraunhofer Institute for Solar Energy Systems ISE (Freiburg, Germany), and also exceeds the current 20.3% world record for CIGS PV cells.

Record Efficiency of 18.7% for Flexible CIGS Solar Cells

Renewable Energy News
Scientists at Empa, the Swiss Federal Laboratories for Materials Science and Technology, have further boosted the energy conversion efficiency of flexible solar cells made of copper indium gallium (di)selenide (also known as CIGS) to a new world record of 18.7% – a significant improvement over the previous record of 17.6% achieved by the same team in June 2010.

MiaSolé Achieves 15.7% Efficiency with Commercial-Scale CIGS Thin Film Solar Modules

www.miasole.com

[Miasolé] today announced that the U.S. Department of Energy's National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) independently confirmed the 15.7% efficiency of its large area production modules (1 square meter in size). This is the highest efficiency demonstrated for commercial size thin-film modules and effectively closes

the gap with polycrystalline silicon module efficiencies. (...) MiaSolé will ship 22MW in 2010.

Solar panel maker Solyndra will close plant

NYTimes.com
Solyndra, a Silicon Valley solar-panel maker that won half a billion dollars in federal aid to build a state-of-the-art robotic factory, plans to announce on Wednesday that it will shut down an older plant and lay off workers. (...) Mr. Harrison [Solyndra’s chief executive] noted that the market had undergone a significant shift since Solyndra filed for the stock offering, with solar module prices plummeting as low-cost Chinese manufacturers like Suntech and Yingli ramped up production. That has put pressure on companies like Solyndra, which makes advanced thin-film solar modules that are less efficient than conventional photovoltaic modules but had been cheaper to install until prices began to fall sharply last year.

CIGS: solyndra swaps CEO
Brian Harrison has joined Solyndra as President and CEO. (...) The changes come amid a painful chapter in one of the solar world's more engrossing melodramas. The company, which has created a novel tubular solar panel, has raised more than $1 billion from investors and nabbed hundreds of millions in government loans. President Obama and Steve Chu have spoken at the factory. The company has even nabbed clients like Anheuser-Busch. Nonetheless, the tubular panels cost far more to produce than conventional solar panels, making the likelihood of long-term success a question mark in investors' minds. Solyndra's average sale price is around $3.24 a watt and the company has been selling panels at a loss. Crystalline silicon solar panels sell for $1.95 or less a watt and companies can sell them for a profit.
(...) The VC playbook is rather thin. Provide more money, stop providing money or replace the CEO are the primary actions VCs faced with flailing company performance tend to take. In this case, the chosen course of action is to replace the CEO.

The Rise of CIGS – Finally?
Solar Frontier [formerly Showa Shell, formally Shell, formally Siemens] is building a 900-MW factory in Japan, a manufacturing capacity that could turn the company into the most formidable CIGS competitor. The new factory, its third, would put the company’s total annual production capacity at 980 MW. Solar Frontier expects to start rolling out panels this fall and reach mass production by next spring. (...) Solar Frontier is currently producing panels with 11.5 percent average efficiency, and it expects to hit 14 percent by 2014. (...) In 2009, CIGS companies worldwide collectively shipped about 43 MW of solar panels, which came mostly from Solar Frontier, Global Solar Energy and Honda.

CIGS record broken
Stuttgart solar researchers bring a world record to Germany with a 20.1 percent efficient thin-film solar cell. (...) The record-breaking solar cell, made of copper, indium, gallium and selenium - or CIGS for short - was produced in the ZSW research laboratory. (...) The US research institute NREL has held this record for 16 years. (...)
The area of the world record cell is 0.5 square centimetres. The solar cell was produced in a CIGS laboratory coating plant using a modified co-evaporation process, which in principle can be scaled up to a commercial production process.

European record: ZSW research institute claims 19.6% CIS solar cell efficiencies
A new European record has been claimed by the Centre for Solar Energy and Hydrogen Research, Baden-Württemberg, Germany, for copper-indium-gallium-diselenide thin film solar cell, which has produced under pilot production conditions. ZSW said that a 19.6% conversion efficiency had been recorded using an inline multistage process in its automated coating plant. The results have been certified by the Fraunhofer Institute for Solar Energy Systems. (...) Michael Powalla [Member of the Board at ZSW] said that he expects commercial module efficiency levels of between 14 and 15% to be achieved within the next few years.

Honda Soltec Begins Sales of Thin-Film Solar Cells for Public and Industrial Use
Honda's wholly-owned solar cell subsidiary Honda Soltec Co., will begin sales throughout Japan of thin-film solar cells for public and industrial use (...) thin film of copper, indium, gallium and selenium (CIGS).

Solyndra announces low cost rooftop CIGS cylindrical panels
Solyndra's technology is a copper-indium-gallium-diselenide (CIGS)-based thin-film PV system. The company said that its system invloves rolling CIGS thin-films into a cylindrical shape and then placing 40 of the cylinders into a 1-meter-by-2-meter panel. (...) The panels' cylindrical modules could be capable of capturing sunlight across a 360° photovoltaic surface and are capable of converting direct, diffuse and reflected sunlight into electricity.

A High-Efficiency Solution-Deposited Thin-Film Photovoltaic Device
[Advanced Materials, Mitzi et al, IBM] In an effort to significantly reduce fabrication costs relative to vacuum-based approaches (e.g., no vacuum requirements, less energy intensive deposition, better materials utilization efficiency), as well as known solution-based approaches (e.g., fewer processing steps, no high-temperature selenization treatment, more facile Ga incorporation), we are pursuing a simple molecular-based approach for solution-depositing CIGS layers. (...) yielding a short-circuit current density (Jsc), open-circuit voltage (Voc), fill factor, and total area power conversion efficiency of 25.7 mA cm2, 605 mV, 0.66, and 10.3%, respectively.