The Future of Photovoltaics Manufacturing in the United States Summary of Two Symposia (2011) / Chapter Skim
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Overview: Partnering for Photovoltaics Manufacturing in the United States
Overview: Partnering for Photovoltaics Manufacturing in the United States
Pages 3-36
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The urgency is driven by substantial national investments in renewable energy in the current economic downturn. 1 The urgency is also driven by a growing consensus that the United States spends too much on energy, uses much of it inefficiently, and must reckon with a "nexus of concerns" related to the impact of carbon-based energy on the environment, on national security, and on economic growth.2 In his keynote remarks at the National Academies symposium on the future of photovoltaics manufacturing in the United States, Senator Mark Udall of Colorado listed some of the advantages of more widespread use of solar technologies, 1 William Branigin, "Obama lays out clean-energy plans," Washington Post March 24, 2009, p.
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Overcoming the barriers to widespread solar power generation will require engineering innovations in several arenas -- 3 See the summary of Senator Udall's remarks, delivered in the symposium of July 29, 2009, in the Proceedings section of this volume. 4 The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 includes substantial new national invest ments in renewable energy, smart grid, transmission, advanced vehicles, energy efficiency, and many other aspects of energy, environment, climate, and sustainability.
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Energy Consumption by INTRO-Figure 01.epsMay 2008. Energy Source, 2003-2007, for capturing the sun's energy, converting it to useful forms, and storing it for use when the sun itself is obscured."6 Solar power technologies can be divided into two main types: flat plates and concentrators.
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Other competing technologies, such as dye-sensitized PV and nanoparticle PV are at an early stage of development, and commercialization will require much more technology development. National Academy of Sciences, Electricity from Renewable Sources, 2010.a aSee National Academy of Sciences, Electricity from Renewable Sources: Status, Pros pects, and Impediments, Washington, D.C.: The National Academies Press, 2010, pp.
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Finally, Part IV reviews how a PV industry research consortium can help accelerate the research and commercialization of PV technologies, drawing key lessons from the experience of the semiconductor industry in advancing collaborative research.
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As these plants bring economies of scale, their costs come down. Indeed, as Ken Zweibel pointed out, these incentives have, within a short period, led to a rapid growth in the demand for renewable energy technologies.15 This demand, in turn, is attracting PV manufacturing and research to Europe and 13 See the summary of Ken Zweibel's remarks, delivered at the April 23, 2009, symposium in the Proceedings section of this volume.
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And India aims to install 20 GW of solar power by 2022, more than three times as much as the photovoltaic solar power installed by the entire world last year, the industry's best year ever. While an admittedly ambitious target, it reflects the Indian government's recognition of the long-term benefits and potential employment contributions of solar power.16 16 See Vikas Bajaj, "India to spend $900 million on solar," The New York Times November 20, 2009.
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19 See remarks by Robert Margolis of the National Renewable Energy Laboratory in the Proceed ings section of this volume. 20 See the summary of Michael Ahearn's remarks, delivered at the April 23, 2009, symposium, in the Proceedings section of this volume.
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SOURCE: National Renewable Energy Laboratory, 2009. Ken Zweibel put it, "manufacturing will occur in the United States once we have adequate markets, unless something else drives or attracts it away." C
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Source: New Energy Finance FIGURE B-1 Total historical global investment in solar energy. SOURCE: Robert Margolis, NREL, presentation at the April 23, 2009, National INTRO_FigureB-1_replacement Academies Symposium on "The Future of Photovoltaics Manufacturing in the United States." aDr.
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SOURCE: National Renewable Energy Laboratory. 22 See the presentation by Dick Swanson at the April 23, 2009, symposium in the Proceedings section of this volume.
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This doesn't mean you should not invest in break throughs, but constant investment and manufacturing scale can make huge steps." Mark Pinto, Applied Materials 23 See the summary of Eric Peeters' remarks, delivered at the April 23, 2009, symposium, in the Proceedings section of this volume. 24 See the summary of Mark Pinto's remarks, delivered at the April 23, 2009, symposium, in the Proceedings section of this volume.
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As Kent Rochford pointed out, a "Smart Grid" must permit the use of intermittent and renewable sources of energy. Elaborating on this point, Eric Daniels noted that a smart grid must develop a means to forecast the impact of weather and resultant change in energy output from the solar- and wind-based energy sources.
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BOX D Manufacturing Follows Demand for PV "It is going to be impossible to create a U.S.-based domestic industry if there is no domestic demand. This must be stimulated at every level, from residential to utility scale." Eric Peeters, Dow Corning Achieving Grid Parity To be competitive, PV generated power has to achieve grid parity, the point at which photovoltaic electricity is equal to or cheaper than power that can currently be purchased from the power utility.
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SOURCE: Subhendu Guha, Presentation at July 29, 2009, National Academies Symposium on "State and Regional Innovation Initiatives -- Partnering for Photovoltaics Manufacturing in the United States." INTRO-Figure05.eps vector editable competitive with utilities. For example, for northern California, PG&E charges 35 R01568 cents per kWh during peak hours of the day; the retail amortized cost, before rebate, of PV power is about 20 cents.
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product into Europe from Malaysia." By fostering demand, feed-in tariffs can encourage location of PV manufacturing near the home market. In his April 2009 symposium presentation, Michael Ahearn noted that the rapid progress in adopting solar technologies in Europe was initially driven by the use of feed-in tariffs.
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Mark Pinto noted that his company, Applied Materials, has many potential customers who would be willing to invest in PV factories if there were a sufficient market in the United States. They would not make money at the outset, he predicted, so that tax credits would be less helpful than refundable credits for investing in renewable energy.30 28 At least 64 countries now have some type of policy to promote renewable power generation.
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31 Representative Giffords participated in both National Academies symposia on the future of PV manufacturing in the United States. 32 See the summary of John Kelly's remarks, delivered at the April 23, 2009, symposium, in the Proceedings section of this volume.
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The MIT-Franunhofer Center Another model for commercializing university research is the MIT-Fraunhofer Center for Sustainable Energy Systems. Begun fifteen years ago, the Center is an alliance between the two research institutions based in Cambridge, 34 See the summary of Thomas Peterson's remarks, delivered at the July 29, 2009, symposium, in the Proceedings section of this volume.
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Eventually we hand them off to the cell and module makers who do the manufacturing." Industry Research Consortia Participants at the National Academies symposia on the future of PV manufacturing in the United States extensively discussed the potential role of a public-private partnership as a mechanism for collaborative research. An industry research consortium accelerates the development of technologies by coordinating precompetitive work among firms.38 Activities, such as those related 36 The Fraunhofer Gesellschaft in Germany is a large semigovernmental research facility with 15,000 employees, mostly scientists and engineers, and a research budget of $2 billion.
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In the end, it was the American companies that restored U.S. market share." See National Research Council, Securing the Future: Regional and National Programs to Support the Semiconductor Industry, op.
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with traditional CMOS technology.42 41 See the summary of Larry Sumney's remarks, delivered at the July 29, 2009, symposium, in the Proceedings section of this volume. 42 The complementary metal-oxide-semiconductor (CMOS)
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, a joint program with Sandia National Laboratory. SEMATECH In his symposium presentation, SEMATECH's president, Michael Polcari noted that SEMATECH was conceived from separate proposals by the Defense Science Board and the Semiconductor Industry Association to establish a research consortium to respond to the sharp loss of market share in the 1980s to Japanese companies.43 The key goal of SEMATECH, he said, is to accelerate the commercialization of technology by putting in place the infrastructure that allows the semiconductor industry to accelerate tools and materials development and to help coordinate the elements of the technology necessary to manufacture the next generation of smaller, faster, and cheaper semiconductors.
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45 See the summary of Dr. Van Helleputte's remarks, delivered at the April 23, 2009, symposium, in the Proceedings section of this volume.
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"Certainly our experience in organizing and recruiting consortia has helped to bring a lot of cost reduction to the industry." The Role of Roadmaps The semiconductor industry's use of technology roadmaps might also have great relevance for the PV industry.47 Steven Freilich of DuPont noted that an industry roadmap, such as the one developed by the Semiconductor Industry Association, could be a key tool to control a fast-moving technology within fastmoving markets.48 The International Technology Roadmap for Semiconductors (ITRS) sets out the objectives for each technology, performance goals, milestones, and timing.
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Sumney concluded that "for PV, this kind of expectation could also be used, along with a roadmap developed with the Department of Energy and others." Challenges and Opportunities for Collaborative Research in PV While there is much for the PV industry to learn from the successes of the semiconductor roadmaps and research consortium, some participants expressed caution about applying the model directly. Noting that there is no equivalent of a common CMOS technology that can be the basis for a unified technology roadmap for the PV industry as it has been for the semiconductor industry, Mark Pinto stated that any future PV consortium would have to be adapted to the exigencies of that technology.
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Some of the devices can be patterned directly, much like an inkjet printer deposits ink. A key challenge, he said, is to use this high-throughput manufacturing technique to mass fabricate solar cells on large substrates, yielding flexible thin film solar cells at a fraction of the cost of traditional crystalline silicon manufacturing.
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53 He observed that the science of electronic materials has been advanced over the past ten years by the fast growing display industry, but warned that the large display industry in Asia, and the substantial ecosystem of local equipment manufacturers, materials suppliers, and technology developers that supports this industry, are poised to take over the new flexible PV technology when it is ripe. We should ask ourselves how easy it will be for these companies to just shift into solar when the time comes and be very competitive with what we can do, he remarked, adding that the focus should be not only on technological break 53 Seethe summary of Bob Street's remarks, delivered at the April 23, 2009, symposium, in the Proceedings section of this volume.
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throughs but on measures to secure the future of photovoltaics manufacturing in the United States. Initiatives undertaken in states such as Michigan and Ohio show how focused and long-term investments can build a successful manufacturing base for photovoltaic technologies in the United States.
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Funding R&D: Michael Ahern affirmed the key role for the federal government in funding research and development through universities, national labs, and consortia to maintain a flow of commercially viable technologies. John Lushetsky noted that the budget for the Department's Solar Energy Technology Program (SETP)
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We can have the best technology in the world, he said, but if it does not have a demand base, it will not create manufacturing jobs in the United States. Eric Peeters stated that the federal government has a leading role in stimulating demand and "making America a 21st-century solar power." Federal policies to promote demand for solar, he said, include federal tax incentives, formulation of national renewable energy standards, federal interconnection and net metering standards, and feed-in tariffs.
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Most recently, the NREL has sought project proposals as part of the DOE's Photovoltaic Technology Incubator program to accelerate commercialization of solar energy technologies. NREL has also announced partnerships with 13 small U.S.
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Several participants also stressed the need to develop incentives for demand. Recognizing that the future of photovoltaics manufacturing in the United States
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36 FUTURE OF PHOTOVOLTAICS MANUFACTURING depends on growing domestic demand for PV technologies, several participants at the National Academies symposia emphasized the role that public policies can play to encourage demand through early government procurement, feed-in tariffs, flexible financing options, tax credits for production and use, and expanded consumer education. The knowledge and views of participants at the National Academies symposia, captured in this volume, can contribute to the development of a better policies and can help identify the practical steps needed to meet the goal of a sustainable energy future.
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