Nanosolar Inaugurates German Production Plant

Nanosolar inaugurated its new European panel-assembly factory located in Luckenwalde near Berlin.

Nanosolar said the fully-automated factory is capable of processing Nanosolar cells into finished Nanosolar panels at a production rate of one panel every ten seconds, or an annual capacity of 640 megawatts (MW) when operated 24×7.

Production is presently set much lower at approximately one MW per month.

As Nanosolar’s customers attain project financing from commercial banks for the new panel product, the company said it will increase its monthly production rate to deliver on its contractual customer commitments totaling $4.1 billion to date.

Nanosolar also announced that serial production in its San Jose, California, cell production factory commenced earlier this year.

And the company unveiled the technology behind its first product, the Nanosolar Utility Panel^TM.

The company says the Nanosolar Utility Panel^TM is the industry’s first solar electricity panel specifically designed and developed for utility-scale solar power system deployment. The panel is designed to eliminate the "balance-of-system penalty" that medium-efficient thin panels have conventionally carried relative to higher-efficiency, more expensive silicon panels.

Nanosolar said its Utility Panel^TM is the industry’s first photovoltaic module certified by TUV for a system voltage of 1500V, or 50% higher than the previously highest certified.

In addition, it said the package used for the panel is distinctly stronger than that of conventional thin-film-on-glass modules, achieving almost twice the mounting span and thus lowering mounting costs.

Earlier this year, NREL independently verified several of Nanosolar’s cell foils to be as efficient as 16.4%. At 16.4% efficiency, Nanosolar said the foil cells represent two world records in one: It’s the most efficient printed solar cell of any kind as well as the most efficient cell on a truly low-cost metal foil (with a material cost of only a cent or two per square foot and mil thickness).

In terms of current baseline production process, best production rolls now achieve higher than 11% median efficiency, Nanosolar said.