By Matt Johnson
While most media surrounding the official opening of San Antonio’s new solar panel manufacturing facility deservedly focused on its great economic impact and the city’s dedication to becoming a clean energy hub, solar industry publications picked up on another positive aspect. This facility is part of a growing global trend toward a more efficient type of solar panel. Mission Solar Energy’s new facility will produce “n-type” PV panels, which are more efficient than the more common “p-type” PV panels in widespread use today.
Mission Solar Energy, the company that will produce up to 50 panels per hour at the 240,000 square-foot facility at Brooks City-Base, a mixed use community in Southeast San Antonio, will continue to ramp up its manufacturing capacity from 100 MW currently to 200 MW by July 2015. It will supply OCI Company with panels for CPS Energy’s next four planned solar power plants, but the panels will be marketed ultimately toward the residential and commercial solar markets, according to a CPS Energy blog post.
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One of the key differences to this facility, in addition to supplying Texas-made panels for Texas-based solar installations, is its production of n-type silicon (Si) PV. But what is that? The difference between n-type and p-type has to do with a process during manufacturing during which different elements are used to “dope” silicon.
Alex Kim, president and CEO of Mission Solar, said in a release, “We use n-type because it has a higher efficiency and lasts longer.”
For Mission Solar, they achieved 19.7% efficiency with their n-type panels according to a PV Tech article. “The installation and ramp-up of the new equipment and its dedicated processes over the last four months was very successful so that the target cell efficiency of 19.5% and above was achieved earlier than planned,” said Konrad Vosteen, Head of Project Management at RENA, a key supplier to Mission Solar.
According to an in depth technical article in PV Magazine on n-type/p-type differences, in 2011, n-type panels represented about 4% of the PV module production market. P-type was about 84%, and thin-film solar had 12%.
But the market share for n-type may soon change. PV Magazine’s Christian Roselund recently reported on the state of n-type/p-type markets during Intersolar North America, one of the largest solar conferences in the world.
He reported that there is increased interest in technologies based on n-type silicon wafers beyond simply research and development plans. For example, solar lease giant SolarCity announced plans to build a 1 GW module factory based on n-type technology, and GT Advanced Technologies, a major supplier of panel material, announced an agreement to supply n-type wafers for a factory in Qatar.
San Antonio’s Mission Solar facility is the first producer of this panel type in the United States.
Photo: CPS Energy