Tuesday, December 11, 2012

No. 664: Research organization to halve the production cost of solar battery (December 11, 2012)

Business trend:
Under the initiative of National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology, a consortium to develop the next-generation solar battery will be founded. The consortium will introduce a line to develop the next-generation solar battery in the research center to be built in Fukushima Prefecture by 2014 and build a trial product in less than five years. The research organization aims to realize less than 50 yen per watt, about half of the present production cost. A total of 19 companies and universities will participate in the project and the total number of researchers will be 100.

An experimental production line will be built in Fukushima with an investment of 2 billion yen. The researchers will develop such technologies as the method to slice monocrystalline silicon and the method to connect multiple solar batteries for modularization. They are scheduled to develop a pre-production sample in five years. The pre-production sample will be a highly-efficient monocrystalline silicon solar battery 100 micrometers thick, about half the thickness of the present solar battery.  

Monocrystalline silicon solar batteries
 

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