vanguardI wonder how long it will be before we have validation of the larger area devices Vanguard plans on demonstrating.
https://www.masshightech.com/stories/2007/10/22/story9-New-solar-energy-firm-launches-heats-competition.html
Monday, October 22, 2007
New solar energy firm launches, heats competition
By Efrain Viscarolasaga
While solar materials maker Konarka Technologies Inc. made a big splashin the industry with its recent $45 million round of funding, it's nolonger the only thin-film photovoltaic game in town.
A brand-new company has set up shop in Sudbury with its own process toeliminate the high-heat furnaces needed for traditional, silicon-basedsolar cells, as well as the weight of traditional solar panels. In fact,Vanguard Solar Inc. says its process for growing flexible solarmaterial -- using carbon nanotubes -- means that its thin-film materialcan be manufactured in almost any roll-to-roll printing plant.
By changing the cost structure of producing solar materials, Vanguardofficials say they can make solar a much cheaper source of energy forcommercial and residential buildings.
"Everyone has been focused on the efficiency of the cell, but there is awhole other side of the cost structure in manufacturing andinstallation," said John Palmer, Vanguard's CEO and a former executiveat Cambridge-based Biogen Inc. "Even if solar companies gave away solarpanels, there would still be a $4 or $5 installation cost per watt."
Vanguard, named after the first satellite to use solar power, is beingfunded by its founders and a federal grant it received last year.Earlier this week, the company landed a contract Palmer characterized as"a sizable investment" from Lockheed Martin Corp.'s Space Systemsdivision. The project will use the company's thin-film solar material onlow-orbit dirigibles. Its first deliverables are scheduled for nextspring.
Vanguard's founders include former Harvard University professor andchief of the materials science department of Rice University, AndrewBarron; former head of NASA's photovoltaic program Dennis Flood;director of Baylor College's genome sequencing center Richard Gibbs; andformer Harvard chemistry department director Donald Ciappenelli.
The four have also been entrepreneurs. Ciappenelli was the founder ofMaynard's Aprilis Inc., a maker of holographic data storage devices. In1992, along with Baron, he founded Gallia Inc., a nanomaterials firmsold to Oregon-based TriQuint Semiconductor Inc. Gibbs co-foundedSeqWright Inc., a Houston genome sequencing company.
The group is now working from far-flung offices and a P.O. box inSudbury. Palmer said he expects to find office space in Massachusettssoon.
Vanguard's technology uses cadmium selenide atoms to grow on nanotubes,much like cement and rebar in construction. Vanguard has purchasednanotubes from Westwood's Nano-C Inc., which this week landed its own$2.9 million award from the National Institute of Standards andTechnology to develop a manufacturing process for nanostructured carbonmaterials.
The commercial and consumer markets for thin-film photovoltaics arestill in their early days, said Juris Kalejs, CTO of American CapitalEnergy, a solar equipment integrator in North Chelmsford. It will takeabout 10 years, he said, for the public to become comfortable with it.
"We'd love to do projects with thin-films, but we haven't been able tofind a way around the risk profile of an unproven technology," he said.
That doesn't mean there isn't money in the market. According to a recentreport by NanoMarkets LLC in Virginia, the total thin-film photovoltaicmarket was about $1 billion in 2007 across all applications, and isexpected to approach $7.2 billion by 2015. Consumer electronics andresidential materials are expected to be the fastest-growingapplications.