Welcoming the next Solar Panel Revolution
By Dina - September 6th, 2010
Speck Design’s CEO Elisa Jagerson recently attended the grand opening of AQT Solar, the world’s only dedicated thin-film solar cell manufacturer, now located in Sunnyvale, California. AQT Solar leads at the forefront of the solar energy revolution, having created a new low-cost solution to solar panel production.
Providing an alternative to the wafer silicon solar cells that are the industry standard, AQT Solar leverages thin-film solar cells, which deliver a smaller, lighter and cheaper material to convert sunlight to solar power. The AQT cells convert sunlight into usable solar power at a 14 percent efficiency rate. While this is competitive with the CIGS space, it is about half the conversion rate of the wafer silicon cells; the trade-offs however, of faster production speed and greater production quantities, make them competitive with their wafer cell counterparts.
Interestingly, instead of designing their own manufacturing equipment to accompany their product, AQT Solar instead chose to leverage existing equipment, adapting hard-drive manufacturing equipment to their solar cell system needs. This allowed the AQT Solar team to take their product from idea to production much faster and cost-effectively than their competitors- an emergent theme in AQT Solar’s business approach, and quite “Speck” if I may say so myself. Greentech Media provides great coverage of the event in this tour of the AQT Solar’s manufacturing facility:
That’s one huge step for silicon valley, one giant leap for the future of solar.
Leave a Reply