What does it take to start manufacturing PV Solar Panels (building cleanliness, floor, walls, heating/cooling)?
I have space that i feel would be great for this but is very dirty and greasy. In the Process of cleaning it up.
You need a "cleanroom" to begin building PV solar panels. Although the equipment needed to build solar panels is not expensive by industry standards (10s of millions vs. a few billion for the state of the art microprocessors.
There is a balance and trade-off between how clean and the quality of the PV being produced. But generally I would expect that you would need a system to remove all particles greater than 200uM (Class 200). You need to keep particles out and this is accomplished by having positive air pressure so that the air pressure in the production area is higher than the local atmospheric pressure. Also temperature should be controlled +/- one or two degrees, and humidity to a within a couple of present.
At this point you would have to calculate what the conversion cost would be compared to building a green-field building.
October 21st, 2009 at 9:19 pm
you won’t find out by asking here. Hire someone who is expert and give him/her a few million dollars to start buying equipment and hiring the technical help needed.
At a minimum you need a large clean room, diffusion furnaces, etching equipment, lots more.
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References :
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clean_room
October 21st, 2009 at 10:04 pm
I had the privilege of listening the CEO of Sunpower speak once. Manufacturing PV is far lower tech than manufacturing the integrated circuits I’m accustomed to. They don’t even use lithography, they screen-print the patterns onto the wafers.
Making solar cells is well within the reach of a University semiconductor lab, or a corporate lab. However, the industry is all about cost. Making something that will be competitive in this market of tumbling prices would be quite a challenge.
The location would need to have cheap energy, and cheap labor. That’s why there are so many solar companies in China (and even those are struggling, today).
If the business you had in mind was to buy manufactured cells and assemble them into panels, then the operation would be even more commodity, and sensitive to labor costs.
If the market for solar panels heats up here, then maybe large manufacturers will be interested in locating in the US, to save on shipping.
References :
October 21st, 2009 at 10:37 pm
You need a "cleanroom" to begin building PV solar panels. Although the equipment needed to build solar panels is not expensive by industry standards (10s of millions vs. a few billion for the state of the art microprocessors.
There is a balance and trade-off between how clean and the quality of the PV being produced. But generally I would expect that you would need a system to remove all particles greater than 200uM (Class 200). You need to keep particles out and this is accomplished by having positive air pressure so that the air pressure in the production area is higher than the local atmospheric pressure. Also temperature should be controlled +/- one or two degrees, and humidity to a within a couple of present.
At this point you would have to calculate what the conversion cost would be compared to building a green-field building.
References :
Here are some cleanroom tradeoffs for solar
http://cr.pennnet.com/display_article/293102/15/ARTCL/none/none/1/Examining-solar-panel-manufacturing-requirements/
There are many texts on cleanroom design and operation such as
Cleanroom Technology: Fundamentals of Design, Testing and Operation, Whyte