Advanced Solar CPV Manufacturing Plant to Open in NC this Month

SEPTEMBER 17, 2012 
BY ANDREW BURGER 

Semprius is readying the opening of its first manufacturing facility later this month in Henderson, North Carolina. With backing and support from the Obama Administration, the DOE, and the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) in Golden, Colorado, Semprius has developed the world’s most efficient solar PV cells. Its concentrating photovoltaic (CPV) technology is capable of converting 33.9% of the energy in sunlight to usable electricity, according to the parties involved.

Management initially expects to produce five to six megawatts (MW) worth of its leading-edge CPV modules per year at the Henderson, NC plant. That could over time expand to as much as 35 MW and employ as many as 250 people in doing so, according to a Bloomberg News report.

Swimming Against the TideSemprius is opening its CPV plant amidst a general backdrop of solar energy market and industry turmoil, manufacturing plant slowdowns, shutdowns, and layoffs — both in the US and other other major solar-producing countries, including Germany and China. Management and its investors believe that the combination of high-efficiency and low-cost production will prove the company viable in a fiercely competitive global solar PV market that governments around the world have targeted as a low-carbon, green economy growth engine.

Pratt & Whitney Rocketdyne and Siemens AG — both of whom have taken equity stakes in the emerging solar CPV manufacturer — are two of its initial customers. Semprius has raised $40 million from investors over the past 15 months, Bloomberg reports. Pratt & Whitney Rocketdyne and Siemens together own 16% of the company.

A SunShot CPV Manufacturer Ready to Go Commercial

About the diameter of a dot made by a ballpoint pen, Semprius’s solar photovoltaic (PV) cells are triple-junction cells made of gallium arsenide. Low-cost lenses concentrate sunlight 1,100 times onto the cells. Their tiny size reduces module cost, as they take up only 1/1000th of the entire solar module area. It also enables a high density of cells per module, which better distributes unwanted heat across the entire solar module solar area. That eliminates the need for heat dissipation hardware, such as heat fins, further reducing production costs.

Semprius’ patented micro-transfer printing process allows thousands of its concentrated solar PV cells (CPV) to be transferred from a growth substrate to a semiconductor wafer or other form factor. It’s a continuous, massive parallel process that runs continuously and allows the growth substrate to be used repeatedly, which cuts costs dramatically, according to NREL and Semprius.