After several false dawns and over ten years R&D, a new solar technology has entered pilot production in Canada, with assistance of 29,5 million CAD (18,8 million USD) investment from Technology Partnerships Canada and the Climate Change Action Fund.

The conditionally repayable loan will assist Automation Tooling Systems Inc. (ATS) to develop its Spheral Solar™ technology and construct a prototype 20 MW per annum manufacturing line.

The Spheral Solar cell is a lamination of two sheets of aluminium foil encapsulating tiny silicon beads. Each bead is a minute single crystal cell while the foil sheets are the contacts. Initially the new technology should halve the specific silicon material requirement compared to a standard thick-crystalline solar cell.

Additionally, the production process uses no rare materials (such as silver solder) and there is a minimal waste material stream.

Sheets of spheres can be made to any size or shape, are flexible and light weight, and have the potential to greatly reduce module manufacturing and array support structure costs. They offer great scope for new building integrated PV markets. Production from a Canadian pilot line is already underway providing 150 x 150 mm cells for testing and demonstration. A new plant in Cambridge, Ontario, is expected to start production of full-scale cells (600 x 150 mm) with a cell efficiency slightly over 10 % at the end of 2003.

Contact:

• Per Drewes at Sol Source Engineering,
  Fax: +1 905 898 1668.

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