HelioVolt claims CIGS thin film efficiency record

HelioVolt CEO BJ Stanbery is set to announce that his company has set a new speed record for CIGS conversion efficiency, ratcheting up the pressure in the competitive, high-stakes thin-film solar cell sector. The Austin, Texas, start-up, which raked in a cool $101 million in second round funding last October, claims its proprietary FASST reactive transfer printing process can produce cells with a 12.2% conversion efficiency in a mere 6 minutes.

This latest technological breakthrough comes as HelioVolt and competitors such as Nanosolar, Miasole, Solyndra and OptiSolar race to bring the cheapest, most efficient solar cells to market. All are competing to lower the cost of solar cells by using copper indium gallium selenide (CIGS) instead of the costlier, but more efficient, crystalline silicon material. Silicon solar cells have a conversion efficiency of around 14-20%.

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Nanosolar, the most heavily-funded thin film firm outside of the public market and one of the first to commercially sell its cells, broke the crucial $1 a watt price point in December — an important metric because it means cells can become competitive with conventional sources of electricity — and First Solar (NASDAQ: FSLR), the largest publicly traded thin-film firm, is close to doing so.

HelioVolt’s FASST process helps reduce costs by building CIGS cells 10-100 times faster than its competitors’ processes, Stanbery says. The 12.2% efficiency figure was independently confirmed by scientists at Colorado State University. Stanbery added that there was still much room for improvement, and that his company was focusing on squeezing a higher efficiency out of its cells.

The FASST printing process can directly apply (or “print”) thin film layers to a variety of substrates, including glass substrates for solar modules, roofing tiles and other construction materials. HelioVolt said last Tuesday that it would partner with Architectural Glass & Aluminum to develop building-integrated photovoltaic (BIPV) products.

Stanbery hopes to make a dent in silicon’s once indomitable lead in the industry by accelerating the commercialization of the high-throughput printing process to scale production at its soon-to-be completed 20 MW plant in Austin, after which it plans to aggressively expand its operations overseas.

Though it remains to be seen whether HelioVolt remains on schedule to get its cells out by the end of 2008, the company says its record breaking technology will put it out in front of its much bigger rival, First Solar, which uses cadmium telluride to build its cells, from the get-go. Even assuming its technology is superior, HelioVolt will have a lot of ground to make up if it ever hopes to catch First Solar, which already has over a gigawatt of production capacity, and some of its other rivals, which have announced more ambitious construction plans.

Nanosolar CEO Martin Rosecheisen, whose first plant’s capacity exceeds 400 MW, scoffs that HelioVolt’s plant looks more like a pilot project than a commercial-scale one. OptiSolar recently announced plans to build a 550 MW plant in San Luis Obispo County, California. It has already started construction on a 50 MW plant in Sarnia, Ontario, with two additional 20 MW plants to come in nearby Petrolia and Tilbury.