HelioVolt opens first solar thin film factory

Solar/PV

HelioVolt opens first solar thin film factory

Flagship manufacturing facility in Texas to provide 160 new green jobs

Sunday, October 26, 2008

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AUSTIN, USA: HelioVolt Corp. cut the ribbon on its first factory for manufacturing high-performance thin film solar energy products. The 122,400sqft sustainable facility in Austin, Texas is expected to create approximately 160 new jobs for the US's growing renewable energy sector. City officials, state and federal representatives, and energy industry leaders will join HelioVolt executives and staff in dedicating the new solar factory.

"Integrating environmental sustainability, new green jobs and technology innovation, HelioVolt is precisely the type of emerging leader in the global renewable energy industry that this city values," said Austin Mayor Will Wynn. "This home-grown company is hard at work building a better way of harnessing clean electricity from the sun while energizing our local economy at the same time."

"Clean and renewable energy technologies likely represent the single greatest economic opportunity of our generation. We at HelioVolt are proud to be contributing to job creation, market growth, energy stability and environmental sustainability, the combined benefits that makes this new clean economy a positive direction for our country," said HelioVolt's CEO and Founder, Dr. B.J. Stanbery.

Dedicated to sustainability in both product and practice, HelioVolt will house its first manufacturing operations in a certified green building. The company's new facility achieved LEED (Leadership in Energy Efficiency and Design) certification by both Austin Energy's Green Building Program and the US Green Building Council. Specific sustainability initiatives include: efficiency in lighting, energy and water conservation, sustainable materials, indoor environmental quality, design process innovation, and creative water reuse.

"This company was founded on the principal of making solar energy cost-effective, essentially aligning economic and environmental interests to fundamentally change our global energy industry. We are furthering that vision by ensuring that this company is built upon the very concepts of sustainability that we aim to enable in others," said Dave Bowen, vice president of operations at HelioVolt.

The factory marks the first commercial implementation of HelioVolt's proprietary FASST reactive transfer printing process for solar thin film production. FASST is designed to bring solar energy to grid-parity by combining lower cost thin film materials with superior manufacturing efficiencies and high quality end products.

Confirmed through independent testing, FASST delivers copper indium gallium selenide (CIGS) solar cells exceeding 12 percent conversion efficiency in a record setting six minutes. These conversion efficiencies place HelioVolt's CIGS devices among the highest performing solar thin film products on the market today. HelioVolt is using FASST to develop both conventional modules and next-generation building integrated photovoltaic (BIPV) products for the global solar energy market.

©CIOL Bureau