CSU research team flips switch on bright idea

FORT COLLINS – The quiet revolution under way in a ramshackle laboratory on the Colorado State University foothills campus has promise, within the next year, to change the world.

Anyone who believes the claim is outlandish should spend a little time with W.S. Sampath, a CSU professor of mechanical engineering, and his two research associates.

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The research team is on the brink of mass-producing solar panels that will compete price-wise, for the first time, with traditional energy sources. “We’re right now at the point where we can make electricity for the same cost as that generated from gas or coal,” Sampath said. The research team has perfected a manufacturing process that turns ordinary window glass into solar panels that could be used to generate power anywhere the sun shines.

Cost has always been the hurdle for solar energy, once regarded as the overarching answer to the world’s energy needs.

The traditional manufacturing process for photovoltaic, or solar-generating, cells and panels uses crystal silicon as its base – the same material that forms the platform for semiconductors used in computers and other micro-electronic devices.

Using costly silicon, with a process that requires ultra-high levels of purity, photovoltaic cells made in the customary manner look like – and are priced similar to – gems.

But the 16-inch square sheet of blueish-gray glass that Sampath holds in his hands uses 100 times less semiconductor material in the manufacturing process, and with 100 times less purity required.

“This generates as much electricity as two tons of coal,” Sampath said, holding the panel out like a dinner plate.

Company born

Now on the verge of a high-volume, low-cost production program, AVA Technologies LLC – the company formed by Sampath and research associates Kurt Barth and Al Enzenroth – is getting lots of attention.

A major commercial partner, one that the team members cannot identify yet, likely will commit “substantial resources” to the project, Barth said.

“Nothing’s been signed yet, but it looks very, very promising,” he said.

The university has officially released its patent rights on the manufacturing process to the team members, paving the way for widespread commercialization. By the end of next year, the group hopes to test a high-speed, high-volume manufacturing line.

Where that happens is an open question, with the large commercial partner likely to drive that decision. But team members said they hope the manufacturing facility will be located close to home.

“We’ll try as hard as we can to keep this in Northern Colorado,” Barth said. “I’m a Colorado native, and we all live here.”

The process has applications that go beyond generating electricity to power computers and speed electronic transactions in the information-age world. Sampath, a native of India, has secured funding from the United States Agency for International Development to put the panels to use in the most low-tech ways.

Coupled with a battery storage system and a bright, LED (light emitting diode) lamp, Sampath has fashioned a system that he said could replace kerosene lamps used almost exclusively as light sources among the poorest people in developing nations.

“Thousands of people die every year from illnesses related to the use of kerosene,” Barth said. “This is an answer for that problem.”

Low-tech line

The prototype assembly line that the team works with in its lab looks anything but high-tech. The industrial-looking machine seems like it might spit out ball bearings or toasters rather than photovoltaic generating panels.

That’s the beauty of the process, said Wade Troxell, CSU’s associate dean of engineering with a focus on economic development.

“The issue for the solar industry has always been how to manufacture these things in a cost-effective way,” Troxell said. “What they have is a process where glass goes in and photovoltaic cells come out. It’s a continuous, self-contained process, one that would fit in a modest, industrial setting.”

The CSU researchers are not alone in using the core technology for the process. Other companies, including Arizona-based First Solar LLC, use the process in which the chemical compound cadmium telluride is deposited in a thin film on a glass surface.

But the key is in the manufacturing system, and the CSU team says they’re far ahead of competitors in finding ways to mass-produce the solar generators.

A portion of the lab is devoted to simulating conditions that the panels must endure over their projected 20-year life span. A light bath, chambers where completed solar panels endure high-temperature lamps over sustained periods, compresses the 20 years into a few months.

A graduate-student intern, Tushar Shimpi, works on a discrete project to gauge the resistance of the panels to hail. Three-inch square panels, mounted on a piece of scrap lumber, have been sent to Arizona where a gun fires a 1-inch diameter ice ball at a speed that matches that of a falling hail stone.

The light bath and hail tests have assured the team members their product has the durability required for large-scale installations.

The Golden-based National Renewable Energy Laboratory, which provides $400,000 of the $1.4 mllion that AVA gets in government funding, sees promise in the company’s future.

Ken Zweibel, manager of the thin-film photovoltaic partnership at NREL, said the CSU group was on the leading edge of their industry.

“They have something there that’s very good,” he said. “It’s excellent technology. They are among the leading startups in the world. I do see that with some good fortune, if they get private capital, they have the potential to be a very successful company in a fast-growing field.”