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The 34th IEEE
Photovoltaic Specialists Conference Philadelphia, PA June 7–12, 2009 |
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Conference Highlights: Monday June 8
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The 34th IEEE
Photovoltaic Specialists Conference Philadelphia, PA June 7–12, 2009 |
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Conference Highlights: Monday June 8
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The PVSC and PV America conferences are co-located this year with a combined registration of nearly 3,000. The formal sessions of the PVSC began today with a combined plenary session that provided the attendees an outstanding introduction to the relationship of the government to photovoltaics and renewable energy generally. The Mayor of Philadelphia, Michael Nutter, received recognition of Philadelphia as a Solar City and described his administration’s commitment to PV. Pennsylvania Governor Rendel described in detail the policies of the federal and state governments toward renewable energy and urged all o
f the attendees to contact their federal representatives to support renewable energy legislation. Finally, Governor Rendel gave the audience inside information on how to make a great Philly Cheesesteak sandwich, but he warned them that their doctors had told them not to eat more than one while in Philadelphia.
After a break the PVSC began with its own plenary session with three speakers, Sam Baldwin (CTO of the US Department of Energy, EERE), John Byrne (Director of the Center for Energy and Environmental Policy, University of Delaware), and Stephen O’Rourke (senior analyst at Deutsche Bank). Sam Baldwin spoke about the availability of energy resources in the future both in the US and around the world. He also addressed the potential for growth of these resources, the possibility of storing energy using compressed gas, and the status of renewable energy in context of these observations. Finally, he addressed resource lifetimes and noted that Te requires a modest increase in production but that the lifetime of the resource may not be a major limitation to growth of the technology. This was
reiterated by Ken Zweibel in a later session. John Byrne also addressed the impact of renewable energy on climate change and described his perspective on the industry. Finally, Stephen O’Rourke gave his perspective on the investment value and cost projections of PV were presented. He concluded that there are many excellent prospects for PV in the coming years.
about the SoloPower electroplating technology for forming CIGS. Finally Ken Zweibel described the status of thin film PV manufacturing. In Dr. Barth’s talk he noted that Abound has brought costs down to a capital expense amortized to $1.50/W and another $1/W for the manufacturing costs. Prof. Zweibel took note of the decrease in manufacturing cost of the CdTe product at First Solar of somewhat under $1/W. These costs at Abound and First Solar are both remarkable and show how thin film technologies can compete with Si. In the crystalline Si technologies session talks were presented by Z Shi on a new Si solar cell processing technology, P. Fath on the status of crystalline Si and by A. Das on a very high efficiency back surface field cells with a spin-on dielectric.