Day4 Energy boosts solar cell efficiency

Burnaby, British Columbia-based Day4 Energy (TSX: DFE) announced today that it has developed a design and manufacturing process for its Generation II solar cells with efficiency up to 19 percent on mono-crystalline and 18 percent on multi-crystalline silicon materials.

The company said it expects that a combination of the technology and manufacturing process will reduce production costs by up to 25 percent of what is currently possible with conventional technology.

"Our first generation 14.7 percent efficiency Day4 MC module, which has been in commercial production since 2006, already places us among the industry's highest performing multi-crystalline products," said Leonid Rubin, chief technology officer of Day4 Energy.

"With the second generation of our proprietary solar cell designs we are taking a major step towards making solar energy cost competitive with conventional sources of electrical power generation."

The company said the Generation II technology was designed to be fully compatible with its existing manufacturing equipment, enabling rapid deployment and scale-up. Day4 Energy said the new process also leverages existing solar cell manufacturing infrastructure as well as certain processing techniques used in other industries.

"A combination of high performance technology with low cost and manufacturing scalability represents a very significant achievement in reducing the kilowatt-hour costs of solar electricity," said John MacDonald, chairman and CEO of Day4 Energy.

The company plans to fast track the commercialization of its high performance photovoltaic cell technology over the next 18 months and said it's currently in discussions with a number of partners for the scale-up process.

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