The Future of Photovoltaics Manufacturing in the United States Summary of Two Symposia (2011) / Chapter Skim
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Panel III: National and International Consortia: Lessons and Best Practices
Panel III: National and International Consortia: Lessons and Best Practices
Pages 71-83
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From page 71... ...
And then once that gap is closed, you cannot assume you can stand still there." He added the second point that the United States cannot compete against companies and countries outside the United States by relying primarily on lower labor costs or larger, more productive equipment. "You fight that through innovation," he said.
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From page 72... ...
The third and fourth examples, he said, are new: the Nanotechnology Research Initiative and the Focus Center Research Programs. These are successful partnerships of all three sectors, he said.
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From page 73... ...
"We have put thousands of highly qualified students into the industry," he said, "most of them hired by the member companies." The SRC has also become international, collaborating on research with foreign companies. It has a focused research initiative in nanotechnology, an educational component, and Topical Research Collaborations, in which topics are chosen by participants.
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From page 74... ...
SOURCE: John Kelly, Presentation at April 23, 2009, National Academies Symposium on "The Future of Photovoltaics Manufacturing in the United States." PROC-1-Figure01 now.eps vector editable A Nanoelectronics Initiative R01568 The Nanoelectronics Research Initiative takes an even longer view of research -- beyond 10 years, when the shrinking of transistor size is projected to reach its end. "We have a few more turns of the crank left with the wonderful transistor that was invented at Bell Labs back in 1957," Dr.
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From page 75... ...
In addition, about 76 percent contract revenue for research in IMEC's facilities in Flanders came from international companies through international collaborations, and 13 percent came from local companies, which he termed "amazingly high for such a small region" taking into account the size of IMEC. IMEC began with a staff of about 70 people and a founding budget of 62 million Euros.
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From page 76... ...
At the same time, IMEC provides a nonexclusive license for the background information required to exploit the foreground results. In return for these benefits, IMEC charges an entrance fee and a yearly affiliation fee.
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From page 77... ...
"IMEC tries to explore multiple options," he said, "so companies can see at an early stage which one has a chance to become a market winner." He added that with a "core partner system," each core partner can subscribe to a total menu of programs or choose a subset of those. These partners include "the whole ecosystem" of firms: leading integrated device manufacturers, memory suppliers, logic suppliers, equipment and material suppliers, pure foundries and designers.
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From page 78... ...
Companies like First Solar, will push toward a further acceleration of the PV roadmap and IMEC will gladly respond to such a challenge." IMEC also has an activity with organic PV and with highly efficient PV stacks for solar concentration. The IMEC program on crystalline silicon PV research has a number of research modules, with two major themes: One is a wafer-based approach, and the second explores epitaxial thin film on silicon.
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From page 79... ...
California continued to dominate the market with 530 MW in cumulative installed capacity, a 67 percent market share, with New Jersey second at 70 MW or 9 percent market share.
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From page 80... ...
Significant investments in the United States are going into thin-film technologies, multijunction concentrating PV technologies, and next-generation PV technologies. Of about 200 companies that received privatesector investment in the past three years, more than 100 are in the United States Asia has focused primarily on existing crystalline silicon technologies, with a small shift toward thin-film technologies during 2008.
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From page 81... ...
Then, in FY2007, the Solar Program's budget increased substantially, under the Solar America Initiative, to about $160 million per year. This is expected to increase again under the new Obama administration, with new resources to leverage private sector investments through a host of collaborative mechanisms.
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From page 82... ...
market share was declining from 75 percent to 30-50 percent. The PVMaT/PVMR&D Project was a collaborative effort focused on helping the PV industry improve its manufacturing processes and equipment, accelerate cost reductions, raise commercial product performance and reliability, and lay the groundwork for scale-up of U.S.-based PV manufacturing capacity.
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From page 83... ...
He added that the government can help bring the right people together. Eventually, in the case of the semiconductor industry, "people were suddenly afraid of being left out rather than concerned about how to jump in.
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