Applied’s Solar Strategy Goes Very Large

http://www.semiconductor.net/article/CA6504375.html

Applied Materials Inc.’s decision to buy Baccini SpA (Treviso, Italy) for $330M, announced earlier this week, expands Applied’s capabilities in the crystalline silicon (c-Si) portion of the photovoltaic (PV) industry.

While the c-Si market is growing as more businesses and homeowners seek to connect rooftop solar panels to the electrical power grid, Applied CEO Michael Splinter has his sights set on the larger prize: thin-film PV modules.

Splinter seeks to leverage Applied’s ability to handle the very large glass substrates used in the flat panel display industry for solar power generation. By depositing thin silicon layers on glass, the thin-film PV modules sidestep the shortage of polycrystalline silicon wafers that, while easing now, hampered growth in the solar industry last year.

Applied is pushing the use of enormous sheets of glass, 5.7 m2, for use in solar farms used to generate gigawatts of electricity. To improve the efficiency of large-scale electricity generation, Splinter said during the company’s recent financial results conference call, “The key is 5.7 — no one else is in the 5.7 m2 space. The larger format will win.”

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It's so exciting to not only have grown up in Silicon Valley, but to be a part of this.

I was on the phone this morning with a solar power designer. She used to lecture at UC Berkeley. And here we were talking about time to market. Whether someone should wait on a system now, with the promise that new technology will hit the market soon. It now appears that things are moving quicker than I had thought. It's a battery versus photovoltaic efficiency play. But with cheaper photovoltaics, we can create more robust systems without using grid energy.

And it's nostalgic for me personally since my dad is the guy who designed and built Applied Material's very first computer controlled etcher/deposition system. That was back in the early 70's. As a kid, I got to wander around there. Even the super secret vault they had.

5.7 square meters is gigantic! Wow.

This whole explosion of solar equipment is cause for a lot of optimism.