Dow itself invested in thin-film solar startup NuvoSun for its solar shingles and shut down its internal work on thin-film solar.
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So far, First Solar has ruled the roost in thin film solar with cadmium telluride thin film.
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Just yesterday, First Solar, the largest thin film solar company worldwide, said it would close its German factory, idle part of a Malaysian factory and layoff 30% of its global workforce.
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The prospect of getting a piece of that growth has fueled the stocks of companies such as Sunpower, the leader in producing traditional silicon solar-power panels, and First Solar, whose thin-film solar panels are cheaper to manufacture but are less efficient.
Instead of traditional crystalline silicon solar panels, it will be using thin film solar, which uses elements other than silicon.
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As a result, silicon solar panels are not much more expensive than thin film solar panels these days.
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First Solar, one of the biggest panel makers in the world and by far the biggest producer of thin-film solar panels announced today it is acquiring development projects from Edison Mission Group, a subsidiary of Edison International.
It is an inflatable pouch that has a thin-film solar panel with two-coin cell rechargeable batteries.
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SoloPower makes thin-film solar cells but rather than package them into a rigid panel, its solar collectors are flexible strips.
IBM's approach is based on a process developed by IBM Research to crank out so-called thin-film solar cells based on copper, indium, gallium and selenide.
And the Energy Conversion exec adds that the company is working on new technology that should improve the conversion efficiency of its thin-film solar products.
The attraction of cadmium telluride thin-film solar is its lower cost.
That has made thin-film solar particularly attractive to utilities that have deployed them in huge arrays on the ground to generate hundreds of megawatts of electricity.
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Nanosolar, furthermore, a maker of thin-film solar cells, has a project in Spain that applies nano-science that will provide 16, 500 megawatt hours of electricity each year.
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The thin-film solar panels, developed by Honda, are more efficient than current solar panels, so Honda will market them on their own to homes and small businesses.
The wings are covered with a sheet of thin-film solar panels, which produce less power than the polycrystalline solar panels found on buildings, but are very lightweight.
Thin-film solar makers want to work with the 64-square-foot sheets of glass used by Applied's LCD customers, but solar glass is four times as thick as display glass.
Solar stocks are heading lower across the board this morning following an alarming earnings warning after the close yesterday by thin-film solar provider Energy Conversion Devices (ENER).
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The provider of thin-film solar products recently warned that it was reducing production in the face of subsidy cuts in Italy and France, and the stock slumped.
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To hear Michael Bartholomeusz tell it, making thin film solar panels out of the promising but beguiling technology known as CIGS is about as easy as baking banana bread.
Today, Intermolecular announced an ongoing project with King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST) in Saudi Arabia for the enhancement of copper-indium-gallium-diselenide (CIGS) thin film solar manufacturing technology.
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Some may remember Konarka, a Massachusetts-based company working on creating flexible thin-film solar that could be applied to everything from tent material to clothing to the roof of a bus.
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The idea behind thin-film solar cells, however, is to work with flexible films, slashing costs while creating solar cells that can be wrapped around walls or even incorporated into tinted windows.
While thin-film solar panels have lower efficiencies than conventional crystalline silicon panels like those found on residential rooftops, they could be produced at a cheaper cost, especially when silicon prices rise.
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At a lunch at One Market in San Francisco, Chris Gronet, a Solyndra founder and then-chief executive, pulled from a case a long cylindrical tube that was coated in thin-film solar cells.
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While less efficient at converting sunlight into electricity than conventional photovoltaic cells, the promise of thin-film solar was that it could be manufactured much cheaper as cells are printed on glass or long rolls of thin metal.
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That is not great compared with the 20% and more achieved by a silicon-based solar cell, the 40% managed by a solar-thermal turbine, or even the 18-20% of one of the new generation of cheap and cheerful thin-film solar cells.
Just as telecom companies laid down billions of dollars worth of fibre-optic cables, environmental companies require large amounts of capital for building a wind farm or a tidal barrage or the patience to invest in new technologies, such as cellulosic ethanol or thin-film solar panels.
Just last week, GE Energy (NYSE:GE) laid off workers and put expansion plans at their Colorado factory on hold for at least 18 months while they try to improve the Cadmium Telluride (CdTe) thin film solar technology they plan to produce there.
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In his 50-year career, Ovshinsky received more than 400 patents in the U.S. and more than 800 foreign patents covering a range of technologies, including nickel-metal hydride batteries, rewritable CDs, DVD optical discs, flat-screen liquid crystal displays, hydrogen fuel cells, thin-film solar cells and others.
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