NEWS ANALYSIS


Amonix: the future of concentrating PV after all?


Just when you thought Amonix was scaling down operations, the CPV system manufacturer comes back with a re-vamped manufacturing strategy and a cheaper module. Compound Semiconductor talks to founder, Vahan Garboushian, about the company’s future.


WHEN AMONIX called an end to concentrated photovoltaic module manufacturing at Nevada in the summer of last year, the industry was left shaken.


But ABB’s decision to stop funding up and coming start-up GreenVolts, only two months later, sent the industry reeling. Had CPV finally fallen foul to the ever- decreasing costs offered by silicon PV manufacturers? Recent developments from Amonix would suggest not.


In February of this year, the company revealed it had joined forces with Solar Junction, a key developer of multi- junction solar cells for the CPV market, in a bid to drive module efficiencies up while bringing costs down. Amonix has worked with most cell developers, and very closely with multi-junction cell developer, SpectroLab, but Solar Junction’s record-breaking cell efficiency of 44 percent at 947 suns prompted the new partnership.


Then, only weeks ago, the CPV module manufacturer claimed a record module efficiency of 36 percent, using Spectrolab’s 40 percent efficiency cells, beating its previous record by more than one percent and demonstrating an unprecedented cell to module conversion efficiency of more than 90 percent.


At a time when industry players could be forgiven for thinking the California-


based business is on its way out, Amonix looks set to prove otherwise. And, as founder and chief technology officer, Vahan Garboushian, told Compound Semiconductor, expect more, and soon.


“[With Solar Junction] we have demonstrated a 44 percent cell efficiency in the laboratory, but we are also working on the real world,” he says. “In the next six months we would like to produce a production cell with an efficiency of 42 percent. We will put this into one of our modules, resulting in a much higher efficiency, maybe in the 37 to 38 percent range.”


Indeed, such an increase in efficiency would go some way to reducing the CPV costs, which Amonix desperately needs to do if it is to compete with silicon solar cell systems.


As Garboushian highlights: “Any increase in efficiency is directly translated to the cost of the overall system in a disproportionate way. A one percent increase in efficiency will give you a much bigger benefit in terms of the cost.”


But the business is also looking at other ways to cut the costs of its modules, starting with the CPV supply chain, which Garboushian describes as “disorganised”.


18 www.compoundsemiconductor.net July 2013


“We’ve bought millions of cells from SpectroLab and are qualified with other vendors at lower volumes and buy lenses from all the manufacturers. In the silicon market five year contracts would have been awarded to lower the costs here; this hasn’t happened yet in the CPV industry,” he says. “But it’s about to happen and that’s something we are working on. We’ve been negotiating a lot of long-term contracts with a lot of companies.”


Garboushian is also confident that the industry shift from 4-inch to 6-inch GaAs wafers will drive costs down. As he points out, SpectroLab has just converted to 6-inch wafers. “Others are doing this and will get much more efficient runs as utilisation of machinery gets better,” he adds.


Page 1  |  Page 2  |  Page 3  |  Page 4  |  Page 5  |  Page 6  |  Page 7  |  Page 8  |  Page 9  |  Page 10  |  Page 11  |  Page 12  |  Page 13  |  Page 14  |  Page 15  |  Page 16  |  Page 17  |  Page 18  |  Page 19  |  Page 20  |  Page 21  |  Page 22  |  Page 23  |  Page 24  |  Page 25  |  Page 26  |  Page 27  |  Page 28  |  Page 29  |  Page 30  |  Page 31  |  Page 32  |  Page 33  |  Page 34  |  Page 35  |  Page 36  |  Page 37  |  Page 38  |  Page 39  |  Page 40  |  Page 41  |  Page 42  |  Page 43  |  Page 44  |  Page 45  |  Page 46  |  Page 47  |  Page 48  |  Page 49  |  Page 50  |  Page 51  |  Page 52  |  Page 53  |  Page 54  |  Page 55  |  Page 56  |  Page 57  |  Page 58  |  Page 59  |  Page 60  |  Page 61  |  Page 62  |  Page 63  |  Page 64  |  Page 65  |  Page 66  |  Page 67  |  Page 68  |  Page 69  |  Page 70  |  Page 71  |  Page 72  |  Page 73  |  Page 74  |  Page 75  |  Page 76  |  Page 77  |  Page 78  |  Page 79  |  Page 80  |  Page 81  |  Page 82  |  Page 83  |  Page 84  |  Page 85  |  Page 86  |  Page 87  |  Page 88  |  Page 89  |  Page 90  |  Page 91  |  Page 92  |  Page 93  |  Page 94  |  Page 95  |  Page 96  |  Page 97  |  Page 98  |  Page 99  |  Page 100  |  Page 101  |  Page 102  |  Page 103  |  Page 104  |  Page 105  |  Page 106  |  Page 107  |  Page 108  |  Page 109  |  Page 110  |  Page 111  |  Page 112  |  Page 113  |  Page 114  |  Page 115  |  Page 116  |  Page 117  |  Page 118  |  Page 119  |  Page 120  |  Page 121  |  Page 122  |  Page 123  |  Page 124  |  Page 125  |  Page 126  |  Page 127  |  Page 128  |  Page 129  |  Page 130  |  Page 131  |  Page 132  |  Page 133  |  Page 134  |  Page 135  |  Page 136  |  Page 137  |  Page 138  |  Page 139  |  Page 140  |  Page 141  |  Page 142  |  Page 143  |  Page 144  |  Page 145  |  Page 146  |  Page 147  |  Page 148  |  Page 149  |  Page 150  |  Page 151  |  Page 152  |  Page 153  |  Page 154  |  Page 155  |  Page 156  |  Page 157  |  Page 158  |  Page 159  |  Page 160  |  Page 161  |  Page 162  |  Page 163  |  Page 164  |  Page 165  |  Page 166  |  Page 167  |  Page 168  |  Page 169  |  Page 170  |  Page 171  |  Page 172  |  Page 173  |  Page 174  |  Page 175  |  Page 176  |  Page 177  |  Page 178  |  Page 179