Reuters has an article on what will be the world's largest thin film solar power plant - Solar Frontier to supply world's largest CIGS solar plant.

Japan's Solar Frontier has reached a deal to supply up to 150 megawatts of its solar panels to a California power plant that will one day be the world's largest solar installation made from an up-and-coming technology know as CIGS.

The company, a unit of Showa Shell Sekiyu KK, called it "a landmark moment" for CIGS technology, or solar panels that use copper indium gallium selenide as their raw material. Once completed, the project with a unit of France's EDF Energies Nouvelles will supply enough electricity to power 35,000 homes.

CIGS panels have been slow to penetrate a market dominated by silicon-based equipment, although they have long been seen as a potential challenger to traditional panels because they cost less to manufacture and have the potential to generate nearly as much electricity from the sun's light.

Solar Frontier is the world's largest CIGS manufacturer.

Renewable Energy World has an article on a Japanese entrant into the thin film solar market - Solar Frontier Opens Largest Thin-film Plant in the World.

One of the world's largest solar module factories, perched atop the bucolic foothills of West Japan's bamboo and pine-covered mountains, began operating in February.

This fully automated facility – capable of producing about 1 GW of thin-film solar modules – is the result of more than three decades of research and development by an oil company, which hopes to eventually generate 50% of its revenue from sales of renewable energy products and services.

“We won’t take anything less than 10% of global market share” in the next seven years, said Shigeya Kato, chairman of Showa Shell Sekiyu K.K., which has a 100% subsidy in module factory operator Solar Frontier. “The market has grown so much that even a 1 GW plant capacity won’t reach 10%.”

Solar Frontier said it could eventually build an overseas plant, but it must first prove to Showa Shell’s board of oilmen that its uniquely black solar panels can translate into black gold in the competitive, global thin-film industry.

The company invested 100 billion yen, more than $1 billion, at its Kunitomi plant in Miyazaki Prefecture on the southwest island of Kyushu. Recouping that investment will be challenging, Kato said, because the Yen is trading low compared to the dollar and euro. Further complicating Solar Frontier’s efforts is the weak Japanese economy, which economists say will likely sink deeper into recession in the wake of the March 11 earthquake, tsunami and nuclear crisis that caused an estimated $300 billion in damage. Still, Solar Frontier leaders say demand for solar energy could be a bright story for this struggling country.

Solar Frontier’s Kunitomi factory produces modules that use a version of the copper, indium, gallium and selenium (CIGS) technology. More than one-dozen cleantech writers last week toured the factory, which the company claims is capable of producing 112,000 modules (130 W to 150 W each) per week.

In recent press releases, Solar Frontier has said its copper, indium and selenium (CIS) modules are more environmentally friendly than conventional thin-film because they do not use toxics like lead or cadmium. That marketing strategy takes aim at conventional, thin-film panels based on cadmium telluride (CdTe). Squarely in Solar Frontier’s sights is First Solar, the world’s leading thin-film panel manufacturer, which has also invested in bringing to market a competitive CIGS module, though its current modules are based on the CdTe platform.

GreentechMedia reports that thin film solar company Nanosolar is slowly making headway constructing a solar farm and factory in Germany - Nanosolar Broke Ground on 1MW Power Plant, Launched German Panel Factory.

Nanosolar and Beck Energy began building a 1-megawatt solar power plant in Germany last October, a delay that was caused by the permitting process and poor weather conditions, said Nanosolar CEO Martin Roscheisen Thursday.

Roscheisen provided some updates of the company's progress in manufacturing and power plant development in response to a critical story in the January issue of Photon International. Roscheisen disputed several assertions made in the article, "Nanosolar: No news from the world champion in blowing smoke," contending that the magazine relied on "outdated quotes and information."

The article said Nanosolar and Beck Energy faced a significant delay in building the 1-megawatt power plant, which was supposed to be built on a former landfill in eastern Germany between May and November last year. It's not clear when the writer visited the site in Luckenwalde, but the story said, "And with 2009 upon us: the sign is the only thing at the construction site."

The San Jose, Calif.-based thin-film startup announced the power plant project in December 2007, when it also said it had started commercial shipment of its copper-indium-gallium-diselenide (CIGS) panels to Beck, its first customer (see Nanosolar Chooses German Town for Solar Plant and Nanosolar Begins Production).

Roscheisen on Thursday provided a photo showing the construction activity for "one of our European solar power plants," (see above) and wrote in an email reply that construction in Luckenwalde began last October "and in November active construction was taking place." He said the installation work shown in the photo is taking place in Germany, but declined to name the city.

Roscheisen also declined to say when the project will be completed, saying the construction schedule is determined by the installer.

The Photon article said Nanosolar was supposed to start commercial production in 2007, but has little to show for since. At a Photon conference in San Francisco last December, the article said, Roscheisen announced that the start of mass production at Nanosolar's panel assembly factory, also in Luckenwalde, would be delayed until March this year. Roscheisen was quoted to say that the company planned to "officially inaugurate our production on March 24 in Berlin." Luckenwalde is just south of Berlin.

Roscheisen said the March date wasn't referring to a manufacturing milestone but an event timed for the visit of Germany's environmental minister and European Union officials.

"Irrespective of this date, the factory is already operating," Roscheisen wrote. All the tools for the factory were "up and running since the end of last year." In the past, Nanosolar assembled its CIGS thin-films into panels at its much smaller assembly line in San Jose, Calif.

The factory construction is completed to accommodate a production capacity of 620 megawatts. But the company is running in "one-shift mode only -- this is sufficient for the time being due to the massive capacity of this factory," Roscheisen wrote. He declined to say when the factory will start operating around the clock.

He reiterated his statement from December 2007 that the company had started shipping commercial panels by then. The company had been making CIGS cells for panel assembly in San Jose, Calif.

The Nanosolar company blog has a post on their fast thin-film solar printing process.

As we are busy ramping our operation, we almost forgot to recognize achieving a major milestone in solar technology: The solar industry’s first 1GW production tool. Here it is:

Most production tools in the solar industry tend to have 10-30MW in annual production capacity. How is it possible to have a single tool with Gigawatt throughput?

This feat is fundamentally enabled through the proprietary nanoparticle ink we have invested so many years developing. It allows us to deliver efficient solar cells (presently up to more than 14%) that are simply printed.

Printing is a simple, fast, and robust coating process that in particular eliminates the need for expensive high-vacuum chambers and the kinds of high-vacuum based deposition techniques from industries where there’s a lot more $/sqm available for competitive manufacturing cost.

Our 1GW CIGS coater cost $1.65 million. At the 100 feet-per-minute speed shown in the video, that’s an astonishing two orders of magnitude more capital efficient than a high-vacuum process: a twenty times slower high-vacuum tool would have cost about ten times as much per tool.

Plus if we cared to run it even faster, we could. (The same coating technique works in principle for speeds up to 2000 feet-per-minute too. In fact, it turns out the faster we run, the better the coating!)

CNet reports that IBM is also getting into the thin-film solar market, in partnership with Japanese company Tokyo Ohka Kogyo (TOK).

The computing giant on Monday is expected to announce a deal with a Japanese semiconductor equipment manufacturer to make thin-film solar cells from CIGS, a combination of copper, indium, gallium, and selenide.

Neither IBM nor its partner, Tokyo Ohka Kogyo (TOK), plan to manufacture cells themselves. Rather, they will develop technology that can be licensed to solar companies in two or three years, said Supratik Guha, lead scientist for photovoltaics at IBM Research.

IBM has already built a prototype device. Once made at large volumes on a glass substrate, the cells are expected to deliver electricity at less than one dollar per watt at peak times--a long-held target of many solar outfits.

"We have the skills that we have developed in other areas--standard silicon semiconductors, materials chemistry--and we're looking to utilize those skills in the photovoltaic space and develop IP (intellectual property) and know-how that other people don't have," Guha said.

Traditional solar cells are made from silicon, but alternative thin-film materials are becoming a larger share of the market. Thin-film cells are less efficient at converting sunlight to electricity than silicon, but they require much less material to produce a cell, making them cost-competitive. Solar high-flier First Solar sells thin-film cells from cadmium telluride.

CIGS is a material that a number of companies are betting on, including Nanosolar, Global Solar Energy, Miasole, and Heliovolt. These companies are not producing cells at large volumes yet, but use of CIGS is expected to catch on quickly next year as their factories come online.

"CIGS will be the big story of 2009 because we know how many companies are putting in multimegawatts of CIGS (production capacity) in 2009," predicted solar expert Travis Bradford, president of the Prometheus Institute, who spoke at a recent Greentech Media solar briefing.

IBM's CIGS manufacturing technique came out of research IBM had done about 10 years ago in flexible electronics.

It's a break with the most common CIGS manufacturing process, called co-evaporation, in which active chemicals are immersed in a solution that gets removed in a vacuum.

IBM's "solution-based processing" calls for the chemicals to be dissolved in a liquid and then dried. It does not require a vacuum, doesn't require as much energy to run, and can be done faster than co-evaporation, Guha said.

IBM is also looking to leap-frog existing CIGS manufacturers on efficiency with a target of about 15 percent.

The efficiency of the CIGS cells on the market now is at about 9 percent or 10 percent. HelioVolt recently announced that it hit 12.2 percent efficiency with a process that is faster than co-evaporation. Global Solar said it expects to get to 14 percent, eventually.

The record for efficiency was done by the U.S. National Renewable Energy Research Laboratory (NREL) earlier this year, which reached 19.9 percent efficiency through a co-evaporation process.

Global Public Media has an interview with Mark Ennis of Airtricity, talking about the European supergrid idea.

A high voltage electricity grid connecting countries from the North Sea to the Bay of Biscay could provide almost a third of Europe's power by 2030, according to the company behind the idea. The system would improve energy security, cut emissions, and even reduce the price of power at times of peak demand.

The supergrid is the brainchild of Irish wind generator Airtricity - recently acquired by Scottish and Southern Energy for €1.1 billion - and would connect countries as far apart as Norway and Spain to each other's offshore wind farms. When the wind blows in one country but not in others, power would be directed through the high voltage direct current (HVDC) network to wherever it is needed most.

According to Mark Ennis, Airtricity's Executive Director for Strategy and Public Policy, the system will solve the Achilles heel of wind generation. In an interview with lastoilshock.com and Global Public Media, Ennis said "By having a very large grid over several thousand kilometers you take the variability out, you almost come out with base load energy"

Speaking on the sidelines of the World Future Energy Summit in Abu Dhabi last week, Ennis went on to say that the HVDC technology is proven, that existing financial incentives are already sufficient to make the idea viable, and that a regulatory agreement between countries is close: "I think we are nearly there". If work starts soon, Ennis claimed, the supergrid could supply 30% of Europe's power by 2030.

The initial investment would be huge, but would be spread between grid operators, such as the National Grid in Britain, and Eon Netzt in Germany, and wind farm operators. However, by directing electricity to where demand - and prices - are highest, according to Ennis the system should reduce peak demand for fossil fuels and therefore bring costs down.

On the solar front, Cleantech.com reports that Global Solar has achieved 10% efficiency from its CIGS thin film solar cells.

Tuscon, Ariz.-based Global Solar Energy announced today that its thin-film solar cells hit a milestone, reaching an average of 10 percent efficiency. The company said its copper indium gallium diselenide cells achieved the efficiency over several production runs.

"This is the culmination of three full years of being in production and evolving our proprietary production techniques to continuously improve the efficiency and output of our production," said Jeffrey Britt, VP of technology at Global Solar.

Global Solar said it hit the milestone in December, capping off a year in which it said it also manufactured and shipped 4 megawatts of photovoltaic material for commercial, government, military and consumer products.

Thin film solar company Nanosolar has now shipped its first solar panels and begun an auction for the second panel produced - now cancelled by eBay because Nanosolar decided to donate the purchase price to charity (the third pnael has been donated to the Tech Museum in San Jose, california), leading to speculation that the (direct) cost of solar power is now cheaper than coal (and falling).

While it is still too early to tell whether or not Nanoslar can meet their goal of producing cells at $1 per watt, the fact that the company has constructed a manufacturing plant and begun shipping the product to a paying customer (in Germany) is a good sign.

The first plant is reportedly capable of producing 430 megawatts a year of cells, which is a respectable amount compared to the total amount of photovoltaic manufacturing capacity currently in place.

Nanosolar's cells are made of Copper Indium Gallium Selenide (CIGS). They aren't the only company working in this area - competitors include Heliovolt and the struggling Miasole. Other thin film solar manufacturers are working with materials like Amorphous Silicon (a-Si) - for example Power Film, XSunX and United Solar Ovonic - or Cadmium Telluride (CdTe) - for example First Solar. Konarka also sell "power plastic" (soon to be marketed in Australia by Skyshades) using "Graetzel cells" based on a thin coating of ruthenium and organic bipyridine molecules over a titanium substrate.

One potential issue to watch as manufacturing volumes are scaled up is the availability of the various materials that make up thin film cells.

Availability and price of Tellurium are already concern to analysts of First Solar, though there is speculation that copious amounts of Tellurium can be mined from deep sea ridges.

There appear to be similar concerns about availability of indium in particular (and to a lesser extent gallium) for CIGS cells, though as usual concrete data on total reserves for these seems to be in short supply as well.

Nanosolar's technology is reportedly capable of achieving higher efficiency rates (up to 19.5%) than are achieved with other thin-film technologies. However, these efficiency rates have only been seen under laboratory conditions so far. Mass produced CIGS solar cells usually have efficiency rates of 12%-15% – making them about half as efficient as their silicon PV counterparts.