Suniva bumps solar efficiency up to 18% at 96-MW facility

Atlanta, Ga.-based solar cell manufacturer Suniva said today its newly launched 64-megawatt manufacturing line is producing monocrystalline silicon solar cells with 18-percent efficiency, a record for screen-printed cells in full-scale production.

Officials said the announcement puts Suniva one step closer to the accomplishments of efficiency-leaders SunPower and Sanyo while retaining the cost-effectiveness of thin film silicon.

"We are the only cell maker achieving these efficiencies with low-cost processing," Bryan Ashley, vice president of sales and marketing for Suniva, told the Cleantech Group. "The companies achieving higher efficiencies aren’t using simple cell designs like screen-printing to get there. That means higher processing cost and specialized module integration procedures." 

Ashley said that Suniva plans to retrofit the existing 32-MW line to make it easier to achieve 18-percent efficiency, which represents a new high for the company's cells in production. With today's addition of a second line, Suniva's Norcross, Ga., facility now has 96 MW of production capacity.

Ashley said the company plans to ramp the new line to full capacity this quarter before embarking on the next expansion. The third line is expected to be installed in the first half of 2010, bringing Suniva to 175-MWp. The facility has the footprint and space to produce up to 200 MW, the company says.

"We also plan to steadily increase the efficiency of our cells as we install new lines and retrofit old ones," Ashley said. 

Suniva is targeting 20-percent efficiency on its production lines and has already achieved that in its labs. Last year the National Renewable Energy Laboratory verified that Suniva's research-and-development team was able to produce cells with 20-percent efficiency using simple cell designs and screen printing technologies.

Ashley said that Suniva plans to begin shipping the 18-percent efficiency cells to customers this quarter.  

The company signed two solar supply deals worth nearly $1 billion in August of 2008. The $480 million deal with India's Titan Energy runs through 2013 (see Suniva signs $480 million deal with India's Titan Energy), while Suniva plans to supply $500 million in solar cells through 2012 to Germany's Solon (see Suniva, Solon in $500M supply deal).

Earlier that year, Suniva signed a long-term deal to buy $300 million in moncrystalline solar wafers over five years from Norway's Renewable Energy Corp., or REC.

CEO John Baumstark said the company has other customers and suppliers, but he declined to name them, saying that Europe and Asia are currently large markets. He said the company's U.S. manufacturing base was also a big selling point for American companies.

In July, Suniva raised $75 million in a Series C round to expand its production capacity and global sales (see Suniva closes a whopping $75M Series C round). The company previously raised $55.5 million in two rounds.

Investors include Warburg Pincus, Apex Venture Partners, New Enterprise Associates, HIG Ventures, Advanced Equities, Goldman Sachs unit Cogentrix Energy, H.I.G. Ventures and Quercus Investments (see More solar heads to market).

Suniva says its thin solar cells reduce the need for expensive silicon. The company says its manufacturing process uses optimized metallization techniques and proprietary process innovations, also reducing the time and cost to commercialize new solar technology by developing its designs in incremental stages (see Cleantech industry in the U.S. South emerging from stealth). 

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