After REC Silicon closed shop and Qcells lost its domestic polysilicon supply, the country has been lacking a roadmap for a 100% American silicon solar panel. Today, a new path has been announced, with signed deals among Corning, Suniva and Heliene.
A 2000 archive photo from NREL.
Corning will make silicon wafers in Michigan using polysilicon from nearby Hemlock Semiconductor, of which Corning is the majority owner. The wafers will be sent to Suniva in Georgia where they will turn into cells. The cells will ship to Heliene’s assembly site in Minnesota to become fully formed solar panels.
“We are excited that this partnership brings a truly Made-in-America solution to the United States market,” said Matt Card, President of Suniva. “Together, our companies offer the only solar cell in the market that provides U.S. developers maximum ITC domestic content advantage while building a domestic supply chain that provides for American energy independence and a strong manufacturing base.”
This new Heliene module will contain a solar cell with up to 66% domestic content, Suniva claims, which more than meets domestic content bonus credit eligibility parameters for the investment tax credit (ITC).
“This partnership is a significant milestone for the U.S. solar industry,” said Martin Pochtaruk, CEO of Heliene. “By combining our strengths, we are able to deliver not only a high-performance module but also support the domestic economy and American job creation.”
No timeline was announced, although the Corning wafer site is still under construction. Qcells, which will now source its polysilicon from OCI in South Korea, is much further along in its wafer factory construction and intends to open the Georgia site sometime this year.
“Corning is excited to leverage our advanced manufacturing expertise to deliver top-quality solar components and secure the U.S. energy supply chain,” said AB Ghosh, Corning VP and General Manager of Solar Technologies, and Chairman and CEO of Hemlock Semiconductor.
This is great news, yet, look at the “hops” involved in going from boles to wafers to cells to assembled panels. Silicon ‘wafers’ from Hemlock in Michigan, then to Georgia to become solar PV cells then shipped to Minnesota to Heliene to assemble into solar PV panels. Hello, vertically integrated supply and manufacturing under one roof. As freight is still hauled using “fuels” the commodity of fuels is an adder to the finished price of the finished product.
OR jump right over all of this and get to the “rat killing” using layered tandem perovskites using printing technology to create cells to panels along lines that can actually be printed on “heat tempered glass”. Something it looks like First Solar is doing now with its CdTe utility format panels. A lot of the typical solar PV panels are individual cells that output from 40-50VDC. The First Solar panels are utility based and are at about 220VDC per panel. When can one expect First Solar to start doing the hard work and crafting solar PV panels for residential use actually manufactured using solar PV. Building solar PV using solar PV generated energy, what’s the carbon footprint on a solar PV panel made in this manner? It seems there is a new kid in town Tandem PV that is getting investments to build and ramp up manufacturing tandem perovskite panels in the U.S. by this year, into next year.
Tandem PV is also claiming at the end of this year there could well be a tandem perovskite panel with 30% photon conversion efficiency. The average silicon based panel is about 22 square feet with right around 400 watts output. With Tandem PV’s perovskite technology one could expect that same 22 square foot panel to provide 616 watts STC. A 400 square foot array on one’s roof would be 7.2kWp using silicon cells and 11kWp using tandem perovskite cells. Which 400 square foot area of your roof would have old school or new school panels installed? It will be interesting to see what Tandem PV will manufacture and what First Solar will offer as their perovskite solution.