#First solar roofs series#

So First Solar could go into rooftop if it really wanted to – but why bother when it is still far away from saturating the utility-scale segment? Its next product, Series 7, will be larger yet.īates made one thing very clear – CdTe is underrated when judged by its nameplate efficiency ratings, it has a far broader bandgap, or usable spectrum, than silicon photovoltaics, which leads to it performing less well in test conditions, but better in suboptimal real-world conditions and it handles diffuse light better. Since CdTe is thin-film, the problem isn’t weight, and it isn’t purely physical size either – in fact it’s the high voltage of these panels which violates fire codes. Since 2016 First Solar has rebuilt its manufacturing facilities, especially glass, to operate with larger, more cost-efficient units – which is great for utility projects, but to serve rooftop they would need dedicated supply lines producing smaller units. It is developing a transparent CdTe product, naturally very promising for BIPV, and it has its own manufacturing process – basically the same as First Solar’s but “horizontal instead of vertical.” But perhaps the single biggest distinction is module size – First Solar’s Series 6 product is 600mm by 1200mm, so 2 feet by 4 feet. It almost seems strange that Toledo isn’t simply an arm of First Solar – but there are some other things the “little brother” has going for itself. He met the owner of a shut-down solar factory in the Obama era, and saw the potential to revive a company on his own behalf, for a change. But Aaron Bates himself has a past career in Mergers & Acquisitions, not in solar. Most of Toledo’s engineers are from First Solar and the two participate in consortia together. “Their business model has been very focused, in a Ford Motor way – one car, one color.”īates asserts that that there’s only two ways to cost-effectively manufacture CdTe semiconductors and that’s thin film, with First Solar and Toledo Solar both using vapor transport deposition with processing times as low as 15 seconds: the two companies have a technological overlap, but also each have their own IP as well, “The only two patents which allow for large-scale manufacturing of CdTe are theirs and ours, if you want to do it larger than in a laboratory.”Īnd that’s why Toledo Solar was founded – it had the technology, and an entire market segment, rooftop, was being ignored by First Solar, which is doing just fine for itself in the utility sector. “We work well with First Solar – for 20+ years, First Solar has only sold its panels to utility-scale projects”, Bates explains. Despite closeness and similarity the two companies don’t compete. Perrysburg has the most solar manufacturing in the world outside of China, and it should be noted that Cadmium-Telluride is very much an American technology and even a product specifically of Perrysburg R&D. Toledo’s operation is located in Perrysburg, Ohio, less than 10 minutes from First Solar’s first and biggest factory. There are other Cadmium-Telluride manufacturers in both the West and in China, but they are all very small or still getting themselves set up – Toledo therefore claims it has the number 2 spot, with a production capacity of 100 MW, which it expects to double every few years, reaching 800 MW in 2028 or so. Talking to Aaron Bates, the CEO of Toledo Solar he thinks of his firm as the “little brother” of First Solar, a CdTe manufacturer founded in 2016 whose product is instead made purely for rooftop projects. But one thing has remained constant – its solar panels are exclusively made for and sold to utility-scale projects, and it dominates the US large-scale CdTe sector. Its business has grown steadily and now it has a factory planned in India, the first outside of the US and Indochina. In Toledo Solar the US has a Cadmium Telluride (CdTe) player to begin the push into rooftop installations, which could be important in the current market situation – with another 18 months of polysilicon shortages to go, and then likely more tariffs and sanctions holding back the Chinese solar industryĪs we look at the global landscape for CdTe the first name on everyone’s lips is First Solar.

First solar roofs