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OCR for page 132
Panel I
Partnering for Photovoltaic Technologies
Moderator:
Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords (D-Arizona)
Congresswoman Giffords said that many people assumed that her strong
support for photovoltaic technologies was a reflection of representing the 8th
Congressional District, in the southeast corner of Arizona. While it is true that
her district receives more sun than most, she said, the entire country has abundant
solar energy. Yet the country leading the world in deployment of PV, she said, was
Germany, “which gets about as much sun as Anchorage, Alaska. So the United
States has a natural advantage when it comes to solar.”
She said that she thinks about three “serious global challenges” every day
on the way to work: (1) Foreign energy dependence: How have we reached this
condition, and what resources do we need to break this dependence and ensure
our energy supply in the future? (2) Climate change: How fast is the globe warm -
ing, and how might climate instability lead to real problems for the United States
and the world? (3) How can the decline of the U.S. economy best be reversed so
as to ensure our economic competitiveness?
“The great power of solar energy,” she said, “is that it provides elegant solu -
tions to each of these three critical problems.” It addresses energy independence,
she said, by reducing the nation’s use of foreign energy; it helps stabilize the
climate by producing power without increasing carbon dioxide in the atmosphere;
and it promises to contribute to economic competitiveness by creating new jobs
in solar-related industries.
She, like Senator Udall, emphasized that the United States was not alone in
recognizing the economic potential of solar energy. The country has historically
been a leader in solar technology, she said, but it is not a leader in PV manufac -
turing. She said that she hoped the symposium would provide guidance on how
to create that leadership.
132
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PANEL I
OVERCOMING POLITICAL RESISTANCE
One of the most daunting barriers, Congresswoman Giffords said, is political
resistance. “The lobbyists for renewable energy are far outnumbered,” she said.
A survey by the Center for Public Integrity of self-identified lobbyists working
on climate questions reported that only 1 out of 10 lobbyists actually identified
themselves as interested in renewable energy. She summarized the amounts spent
by various energy lobbies during the first quarter of 2009, as follows: American
Petroleum Institute, $1.9 million; British Petroleum, $3.6 million; Marathon Oil,
$3.4 million; Conoco Phillips, $5.9 million; Chevron, $7 million; Exxon Mobil,
$9.6 million. The American Coalition for Clean Coal Energy has an annual
budget of $45 million. For renewable sources of energy, the wind power lobby
spent some $1.6 million in the first quarter, and SEIA, the solar energy lobbying
effort, spent $410,000.
“This is what we’re up against,” she said. “I’m not putting this up so we
can get discouraged, because obviously with few resources, the solar industry
has made tremendous strides. But now we have to figure out how to get this
technology out there and installed and making a difference for our country and
our world.” To do this, she suggested that supporters should “organize, advertise,
and educate.”
“I know that the solar resource in the United States is greater than the fossil
resource,” she said. “And I know that it’s ecologically and economically feasible
for solar to be a major power generator. But many of my colleagues don’t know
this—primarily because they just don’t have the information.” She urged her au -
dience to communicate more directly and aggressively with Congress and others
in positions of influence.
She closed by observing that much of the effort currently expended by so -
lar companies is directed at demonstrating the strength of their own particular
technologies. While this is essential, she said, the PV industry is unlikely to
achieve its potential without more collaboration between all solar companies to
educate the public about the solar opportunity. She said that in Arizona, her office
makes education a key part of its solar strategy. They offer “Solar 101” classes
to the public at schools, libraries, and other locations to explain how the aver-
age consumer can benefit from solar installations at their home or business. She
has created a “Solar Hot Team,” consisting of solar leaders from across Arizona
that engages in weekly check-ins to share information and insights on recent
developments.
“The bottom line,” she said, “is that we have a lot to do. Some of my frus -
tration with the technology folks getting into clean energy is that they have not
fully appreciated how energy is different from Silicon Valley and the computing
industry. Many of them have not understood the challenges of going into these
very traditional energy markets, where they have to deal with regulations at the
federal, state, and local levels. Add to that the fact that the lobbying power of
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134 FUTURE OF PHOTOVOLTAICS MANUFACTURING
traditional energy industries is enormous. Ensuring adoption of solar power is not
just about price or level of technology; it’s also about culture, politics, and figur-
ing out ways to get into the system. People must understand all of these issues
before we can make the really necessary changes.”
U.S. PHOTOVOLTAIC ROADMAP:
PERSPECTIVE OF THE MANUFACTURING INDUSTRY (1)
Subhendu Guha
United Solar Ovonic (Uni-Solar)
Dr. Guha’s company, Uni-Solar produces flexible thin-film panels of amor-
phous silicon. These light-weight products, he pointed out, are well suited to
large-area installations such as rooftops. He put on view a photograph of world’s
largest rooftop system, a 12 MW Uni-Solar installation in Zaragoza, Spain. Fur-
ther illustrating the potential of thin-film panels, he also displayed a photo of the
“Zephyr airship,” which had set a record for the longest flight in the stratosphere
powered by solar energy.
Uni-Solar, he said, wholly owned by Energy Conversion Devices, is the
world’s largest manufacturer of flexible solar cells. It makes its solar cells by a
roll-to-roll manufacturing process based on thin-film silicon multijunction tech -
nology. The company is relatively small, with manufacturing plants in Michigan
that employ about 1,000 people, but it has been growing rapidly. In 2003, it
shipped less than 5 MW of product; in 2008, it shipped more than 100 MW of
product.
Flexible Rooftop Products
Its flexible rooftop products are made as 18-foot-long laminate with a paper-
lined adhesive on one side. When the rolls arrive at an installation site, the paper
is removed and the material is attached directly to the roof or other surface,
greatly reducing installation cost.
Dr. Guha reviewed some key events of the company’s history and early
commercialization. From the beginning, the technological concept was to pass
a roll of stainless steel through machines where successive layers of the solar
cell are deposited. The first prototypes were built in 1981. In 1986 came the first
prototype plant, producing 500 kW of capacity a year, and in 1991 came a plant
with 2 MW of capacity.
“In those days,” he said, “amorphous silicon was an unknown entity, and
no one knew how well the products would work.” They sent samples to NREL,
and found that it performed as projected. NREL continues to evaluate Uni-Solar
products, which “has given us and our customers a lot of confidence that you can
have product that is going to last 20 to 25 years.”
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PANEL I
At around the same time, the company started developing new triple junction
solar technology to achieve higher efficiency. It built its first 5 MW production
machine in 1996 using a triple junction processor, and began to see that these
flexible products could be applied to rooftops. In 1997, Uni-Solar made its first
building-integrated PV (BIPV) demonstration and continued to grow. In 2003,
they built their first 30 MW production line, in Auburn Hills, using six rolls of
stainless steel, each 1.5 miles long. In 60 hours, he said, the plant can make nine
miles of solar cell. Today the company has expanded to about 180 MW of capac -
ity, including a production line opened in Greenville, Michigan, in 2007.
During this time, the world market has grown steadily from about 1,000 MW
in 2004 to more than 5,000 MW in 2008. The remarkable growth in the last three
years, he said, was the product of feed-in tariffs and other incentives offered
outside the United States. Of the 5,000 MW worldwide solar market in 2008, he
said, just over 300 MW was sold in the United States; Germany, helped by the
feed-in tariffs, sold six times that amount.
Incentives Offered by Other Countries
One reason incentives are offered by some countries, Dr. Guha said, is that
solar power is not yet competitive with the large power stations producing electric-
ity from conventional fuels. Germany offers incentives ranging from 41 cents per
kilowatt-hour to 51 cents/kWh. France offers about 40 cents/kWh; for BIPV they
give about 70 cents/kWh. Many of the incentives have a downward scale, dropping
every year. The incentives work because they allow construction of large manu-
facturing plants. As these plants bring economies of scale, their costs come down.
The incentive for rooftop solar systems is higher because in many urban areas there
is insufficient vacant space for crystalline silicon PV installations, so this kind of
incentive is meant to hasten the use of otherwise unused roof area. It also avoids
transmission losses, with electricity generated at the point of consumption.
Dr. Guha made a strong economic case for PV usage. He said that deploy-
ment of 100 MW of PV to electrify 200 commercial buildings or schools could
create some 2,400 green jobs. He said that Germany, which has traditionally
been the auto capital of Europe, today employs fewer people in the auto industry
than in the PV industry, which has created 180,000 new jobs. “And Germany
has no more sunlight than my state of Michigan,” he added. “If it can be done in
Germany, I’m sure it can be done in every state in the United States.”
Costs Are Coming Down
Dr. Guha repeated that the industry was not yet cost-competitive, but said that
the price was coming down. In 1990, the cost of solar power ranged from 40 to 80
cents/kWh. Today, he said, costs are much lower, in some places cost-competitive
with conventional electricity at peak usage times. According to the DoE, he said,
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136 FUTURE OF PHOTOVOLTAICS MANUFACTURING
Cost per kW hour
(in constant
2005 US dollars)
$1.00
$0.80
$0.60 Sola
r ele
ctric
ity
$0.40
$0.20 Grid parity
Grid electricity
$0.00
1990 2000 2010 2020
Year
Source: Solar America Initiative
FIGURE 1 Challenge for PV: How to reach grid parity.
SOURCE: Subhendu Guha, Presentation at July 29, 2009, National Academies Symposium
on “State and Regional Innovation Initiatives—Partnering for Photovoltaics Manufacturing
in the United States.”
PROC-2-Figure01.eps
PV can generate electricity in California for 20 cents/kWh, which is on a par with
vector editable
peak-time prices. “We are just there,” he said. “For many residential users, they
R01568
have time-of-day pricing that is more than 20 cents.” He noted that pricing is subject
to wide disparities, depending on the amount of sunshine and other factors. “But
we still have to come down farther,” he emphasized. “The PV manufacturers do
not want to depend on subsidies. We want to stand on our own feet. We want to
reach grid parity, and we have shown that we can make progress toward that goal.”
The way to reduce the cost of PV, he said, is to work with the entire PV
value chain. “You make the solar cell, then you make the module, which is inter-
connected solar cells; then the PV array, for which you need inverters and other
components to convert the DC solar electricity to AC current. Finally, you sell it
to the customer. Through it all, you have to hear the voice of the customer. You
cannot just work on materials, or solar cells. You need the big picture. What does
the customer want? Most of them want to know how much money they are going
to spend to put the PV on the roof, and how much electricity are they going to
get over the next 20 years. In any innovation we do, we must focus on that: how
to reduce the cents per kilowatt-hour.”
Crucial Role for Government
In addition, Dr. Guha said, the government has a crucial role in bringing the
industry to grid parity. That role is to help create a sufficient demand base through
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PANEL I
incentives and grants. The United States can have the best technology in the world,
he said, but if it does not have a demand base, it will not create manufacturing jobs.
At present, U.S. companies are building plants in Europe—because the demand is
there. He also stressed the need to remove barriers, develop uniform codes, and
improve net metering.
He argued that industry has done its part in moving PV toward maturity.
“When you talk about needing new R&D to reach grid parity,” he said, “I have a
bone to pick. We talk about new, disruptive technologies, about how we have to
think out of the box. We have been thinking out of the box and developing disrup-
tive technology for decades. Now is the time to build on the foundation we have
established. I am not opposed to doing something new, because there is no single
choice; there will be many choices. But what industry has already done to reduce
costs is phenomenal. And they will continue to do that. There will be both chal -
lenges for the established technologies, and challenges for the new technologies.”
To extend his discussion of building on what exists, he emphasized the sys -
tem as a whole. He recalled the late 1990s and early 2000s when government
focused its funding on components. Around 2005, however, the emphasis shifted
to a more integrated, program-oriented approach that brought industries, universi-
ties, and national labs into collaboration. “Trust me,” he said, “this was not easy.
Academia does not want to be told by industry what to work on. But slowly we
accepted each other, and it was a wonderful experience to see a bunch of people
with diverse backgrounds working together toward common ground.” Slowly
what was understood, he said, was that a focus on components was not sufficient.
A systems approach was needed to reduce the cost. “For the first time, the main
topic was not how do you increase the efficiency of a solar cell, or an inverter. It
was how do you reduce the cost of electricity, which is well underway.”
He concluded by noting that “clean electricity is not a choice—it is a neces-
sity. We cannot afford to pollute the world with greenhouse gases.” He quoted
the words of the historian Edith Hamilton, who wrote about Athens, “ ‘In the end,
more than they wanted freedom, they wanted a comfortable life, and they lost
both comfort and freedom.’ When the Athenians wanted not to give to society,”
he said, “but for society to give to them, when the freedom they wished for most
was freedom from responsibility, then Athens ceased to be free. We cannot af-
ford that.”
PERSPECTIVE OF THE MANUFACTURING INDUSTRY (2)
David Eaglesham
First Solar
Dr. Eaglesham said he would give the industry’s perspective on both current
and anticipated future conditions for photovoltaic technologies. He showed an
opening photo of a 10 MW First Solar installation in Boulder, Nevada, that feeds
the Southern California Edison grid. “This is an example of a type of installation
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138 FUTURE OF PHOTOVOLTAICS MANUFACTURING
FSLR example:
• 10 years since formation
• 1GW shipped over company history
• $1B in revenues for 2008
• 1GW/year manufacturing capacity
• $0.93/W manufacturing cost
FIGURE 2 PV industry has grown to GW scale and <$1.00/W.
SOURCE: David Eaglesham, Presentation at July 29, 2009, National Academies Sympo -
sium on “State and Regional Innovation Initiatives—Partnering for Photovoltaics Manu -
facturing in the United States.”
PROC-2-Figure02.eps
that’s becoming possible,” vector editable type atop photo
he said. “We can do multiple installations of this size.
R01568
This is a fairly significant contribution even at today’s scale.”
He began with a skeptical assessment of various goals that had been sug -
gested for solar and other renewable sources of electricity, such as a global capac-
ity of 5 terawatts for renewable sources by 2020, projected by the International
Panel on Climate Change. “Think about the growth rate you would need to get
even close to that goal. If you want PV to be even a small component, it would
have to grow at an astonishing rate of about 70 percent annually. I do not believe
that any industry has grown at a sustained growth rate of 70 percent compounded
annually. The real question is how big a piece should solar be of the U.S. energy
mix, and what can we do to make PV play the biggest possible role.”
The PV industry has just recently reached gigawatt size, he said. “It is still
juvenile, at a technically early stage,” he said, “but it has become a real industry.”
He said that First Solar itself is now producing a gigawatt a year of manufacturing
capacity, with a fully operational 800 MW factory in Malaysia, and had surpassed
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PANEL I
$1 billion in sales in the previous year. The company had also lowered manufac-
turing costs to 93 cents a watt in the previous quarter’s actual results.
A Plea for Incrementalism
Dr. Eaglesham said he wanted to emphasize several messages. The most
important, he said, was a “plea for incrementalism.” If you hit “reset” and start
the industry again from scratch, he said, then even a 70 percent compound annual
growth rate would not achieve 2020 goals. It was necessary to move ahead from
the current industry baseline to reach such a goal, rather than expecting some
“disruptive” technology to set the industry on a new course.
“We have a technology that’s in hand,” he said. “I’m citing First Solar data
because I’m from First Solar, but there are other companies with comparable
costs, improvement targets, and expansion targets. It is my expectation that
multiple companies will be able to achieve this kind of cost and scale in a short
time. We have a technical solution in hand, and a cost point that gets us to where
we need to be to drive toward the 2020 goal. Let’s keep pushing forward in that
direction.”
The primary reason why First Solar is able to contain its costs, he said, is that
“it doesn’t change technology every couple of years.” Manufacturing learning,
he said, drives continuous improvement. “This is boring for academics,” he said,
“but critical for an industry—just regular old learning, cranking the handle, grind-
ing on continuous improvements. It’s a key piece of why you want to stick with
things that leverage existing production platforms.” He illustrated the company’s
increasing module conversion efficiencies with a graph showing a rapid rise in
efficiency from 7 percent in 2002 to about 11 percent at present. (See Figure 3
on Increasing Module Conversion Efficiencies.)
Costs Have Been Dropping Steadily
At the same time, costs has been dropping steadily, with the module cost per
watt lower by 43 percent from FY2005 through the first quarters of FY2009, or
an average decrease of 15 percent per year. “Again,” Dr. Eaglesham said,” First
Solar happens to be first out of the gate, but my expectation is that multiple com -
panies in this room are going to have a downward cost curve like this, if a little
behind. I think there’s a clear message that you don’t have to radically reinvent
the technology.”
He paused to clarify his message about R&D. “Long-term R&D is needed
to bring the new technology for manufacturing in the year 2020, so we need to
do that as well. But it’s important to continue the investment in these more in -
cremental stages.”
Dr. Eaglesham turned to the company’s future cost reduction roadmap, which
projects the cost per watt at the module level as falling from 93 cents at present
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140 FUTURE OF PHOTOVOLTAICS MANUFACTURING
Increasing Module Conversion Efficiencies
Modules Produced
Conversion Efficiency
FIGURE 3 Manufacturing learning drives continuous improvement.
SOURCE: David Eaglesham, Presentation at July 29, 2009, National Academies Sympo -
sium on “State and Regional Innovation Initiatives—Partnering for Photovoltaics Manu -
facturing in the United States.”
PROC-2-Figure03 now.eps
title text is vector editable type
to about 52 cents in 2014. There is also aare uneditable bitmapped mage
but graph and its axis-labels comparable roadmap for the balance of
R01568
system components, he said. “When you add those two things, you have a busi-
ness plan that gets you to where you need to be in terms of grid parity.”
Toward a Sustainable Market
Dr. Eaglesham then discussed the point at which the rising global PV demand
line crosses the falling PV cost line to enable sustainable markets. The lines
had already crossed for natural gas peaking prices, he said. For other sources of
energy, including coal, gas combined, and nuclear, the crossing point might be
around 15 cents/kWh, depending on the number of sunny days per year, a price
placed on carbon emissions, the cost of capital, and other factors. A critical vari -
able, he said, stems from the value proposition inherent in all forms of renewable
energy: that the consumer must pay up front for the entire system—in return for
free energy for the lifetime of the system. Therefore, both interest rates and avail-
ability of financing are key determinants of the crossing point to grid parity and
the rate of end-user adoption.
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PANEL I
M odule Cost Per Watt Down 43%;
15% yr/yr
FIGURE 4 Improvements are delivering cost reductions.
SOURCE: David Eaglesham, Presentation at July 29, 2009, National Academies Sympo -
sium on “State and Regional Innovation Initiatives—Partnering for Photovoltaics Manu -
facturing in the United States.”
PROC-2-Figure04 now.eps
mostly uneditable bitmapped image
except main title, “module cost”had already projected substantial growth in its
He said that First Solar text, and orange arrow, which are vector editable
R01568
planned or contemplated gigawatts of PV in the U.S., rising from about 50 GW
in 2009 to 760 GW in 2013. “We are projecting big markets,” he said. “We have
a pipeline of projects already under discussion with utilities.”
Another significant feature of PV development, he said, is the development
timeline. This line is now quite long, primarily because of the permitting cycle,
which is now about two years. He made a strong plea for government policy
makers to work toward reducing this cycle so that PV can be more responsive to
market demand. The government can also take other steps in setting policy, he
said, including simplifying rules and regulations and creating a national renew -
able electricity standard (RES). Dr. Eaglesham noted that other governments,
notably the European Union, China, India, and Australia, have all taken signifi -
cant steps to encourage PV and other renewable energy development.
“It is already clear that the market will follow the manufacturing,” he said,
“and the technology is going to follow the market.” Market location, in turn, is
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142 FUTURE OF PHOTOVOLTAICS MANUFACTURING
driven by the decisions of regulatory agencies in each country. It is also driven
by the cost of freight, since glass products are heavy and expensive to ship. “For
this reason,” he said, “glass manufacturing is almost invariably done where it is
going to be installed. I already have a barrier in importing product into Europe
from Malaysia.”
According to Dr. Eaglesham, U.S. energy policy should address the needs of
three distinct phases of PV development. The first is R&D. The goal of a com -
mercially viable technology should be supported by fundamental R&D, applied
R&D, concept/pilot lines, and alpha products.
The second phase, commercialization, must support technologies of proven
value. “We have to be careful here to simulate development without picking the
winning technologies. This must be driven by the marketplace.”
Finally, the stage of scale-up should focus on commercially proven technol -
ogy. “The critical piece is to develop the programs that will pull from the market.
We need markets to enable efficient scale up, execution capability, and growth
capital. The federal role is to provide transparent and attractive market oppor-
tunities that do not favor selected technologies. They must also provide market
longevity and volume, market price and program guidance, and incentives for
project finance.”
Beginning Technology Development with Market Pull
Usually, Dr. Eaglesham said, technology development is regarded sequen-
tially; the process starts with R&D and works its way “forward” toward the
market. “But for PV,” he said, “if you think about how you’re going to structure
incentives, you want to work the whole thing backward. If you start with R&D
and get to the end to find there is no market, all you have is a train wreck. So you
begin with market creation so that the market pulls the technology from that side.
A large, well-structured solar market drives investment and innovation.”
Dr. Eaglesham offered a summary of main points:
• Current PV technologies are close to grid parity in locations of high and
medium irradiance. “Our expectation is that we can drive the existing technology
base to a place where it can be successful, so we want to invest in continuous-
improvement pathways.”
• The DoE can help relieve major challenges, such as slow and nonuniform
permitting requirements, lack of grid-connection technology, and the need for
federal renewable electricity standards. Other needs include incentives and loan
guarantees at the utility level; demonstration-scale electricity storage programs;
and nonblocking intellectual property provisions for basic research.
• DoE’s support for PV should be sustained from a technologically agnostic
stance, implementing programs without picking winners.
• Although the PV companies are not ready to set technology-level
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PANEL I
standards, they can benefit by collaborating on such tasks as permitting reform
and system-level development.
He closed by urging universities and national labs that would like to part-
ner with industry to be more sensitive to the question of intellectual property.
“I would urge people to think about programs where industry comes to table
and directs the research toward industry problems while protecting the IP,” he
said. “This is a difficult conversation to have with most academic institutions
right now. I only work with the ones that are prepared to work with that kind of
framework.”
DISCUSSION
Professor Zweibel continued the discussion of incrementalism, noting a
substantial gap between developmental research to improve today’s technologies
and reaching for “blue-sky” findings whose payoff might be 20 or 30 years away.
“What we’ve heard in the presentations is that there’s a lot of momentum for very
low-cost goals.” He asked whether the panelists had experienced that disconnect
in terms of how R&D is done or funded.
Building on Existing Architectures
Dr. Eaglesham agreed that disruptive device architectures will be needed in
the future. “But I think there’s enormous opportunity for research in materials
physics and the device physics of existing architectures. In the same way, the
semiconductor industry did a lot of great basic research to understand its basic
materials phenomena. I would just make sure that second piece doesn’t get left
out.”
Dr. Guha recalled that in 1875 the U.S. patent commissioner recommended
the abolition of the patent office because “all the inventions had already been
made. We don’t want to take that path. But I also don’t want to take the path that
whatever has been done cannot lead us to the goal. There has to be basic research,
there has to be focused research, and I think some of the programs of DoE show
that academia and industries can work together toward a common goal.”
Dr. Eaglesham said that the “goal” for him would be to maximize the share
of PV in the mix of renewable energy forms by 2020 or 2030. “If that goal was
set for 2080,” he said, “it might make sense to have a larger portion of investment
in finding blue-sky or radical device innovations. What makes this different for
me is that we have a pressing, pragmatic near-term goal towards which we are
collectively driving. I would urge people to think about how short a time that is.
There is enormous value in exploring, say, the long-term nanotechnology aspects
of these things, which we need, but as a country we would be making a big mis -
take if all we see out there is these radical third-generation things.”
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144 FUTURE OF PHOTOVOLTAICS MANUFACTURING
Congresswoman Giffords reiterated her concern that the solar industry was
neglecting opportunities to communicate its message to members of Congress
and other policy makers. She recalled the recent debates on the cap-and-trade bill,
when the hallways outside committee hearing rooms were packed with lobby ists
from traditional energy companies. “Where was the solar industry?” she asked.
“All of us in this room have the ability to come down and advocate for this tech -
nology, but we were not there. We have a good goal, but we are up against some
pretty powerful forces.”
The Issue of Standards
Obang Yew of NIST raised the issue of setting standards for the PV indus -
try, noting the success of SEMATECH in doing so. If the goal of industry is 70
percent annual growth,” he asked, “how do you get there without standards?”
Dr. Eaglesham agreed that some standards do exist and that they are critical.
“The PV industry is simply not mature enough to set some of them right now.”
He said that the semiconductor industry had a natural collection of standards that
began with wafer size and wafer-handling equipment, “and spread out from there.
The standards bodies have played a huge role in helping that industry be success -
ful. With solar, there is no standard interface for putting a steel roll into my glass-
handling equipment. It’s purely a practical issue.” He added that for the same
reason, there were few opportunities to work together on precommercial R&D.
Marie Mapes of the DoE followed up on Dr. Eaglesham’s mention of col-
laboration among various parts of the industry, asking him to elaborate. He said
that some research on basic device models is common to different firms, such as
optical modeling, as are areas of total cost of ownership analysis. But it is still
difficult to find common themes in precommercial research, he said, “because
this industry is still burgeoning many directions, which is a strength as well as a
weakness.” Dr. Guha added that the industry—especially the silicon area—could
take pride in the fact that partnerships among industry, academia, and national
labs had been successful. “We have learned to understand each other’s language,
to understand that academia can do exciting work—even though it is focused
work—and that academia can help us. The main issue is respect for each other,
and once you develop respect you can achieve many things.”
