Kerry Pianoforte11.21.11
Tata Steel and Dyesol have been undertaking an exciting stage of industrialization of DSC on steel at the PV Accelerator in Shotton, North Wales, since the completion in July of the Welsh Government supported project.
The challenge has been to create the biggest and the best DSC modules utilizing the pilot production line and the team will achieve these goals in under four months.
The team has been constructing a DSC 20 m2 roof array that will be demonstrated and monitored at the Sustainable Building Envelope Centre (SBEC) test bed facility on the Shotton site.
This demonstrates the capability of the processes, developed during the industrial development phase, to manufacture a module that can be integrated and installed as an operational array. This has also required the accelerated development of the product finishing steps.
In parallel, the team has more than doubled the power output while eliminating costly silver conductors.
The major drive now is to bring forward by more than one year the technology road map delivery of high performance, matched by lower cost materials that will enable grid parity to be achieved with DSC arrays integrated into steel roofing.
This would make the Tata/Dyesol products independent of the need for feed-in tariffs.
To date, traditional solar products from China that come closest to achieving grid parity can only perform well in high solar flux solar farms and do not perform adequately as building products, leaving this rapidly growing market sector open for significant exploitation by Tata/Dyesol DSC technology.
The challenge has been to create the biggest and the best DSC modules utilizing the pilot production line and the team will achieve these goals in under four months.
The team has been constructing a DSC 20 m2 roof array that will be demonstrated and monitored at the Sustainable Building Envelope Centre (SBEC) test bed facility on the Shotton site.
This demonstrates the capability of the processes, developed during the industrial development phase, to manufacture a module that can be integrated and installed as an operational array. This has also required the accelerated development of the product finishing steps.
In parallel, the team has more than doubled the power output while eliminating costly silver conductors.
The major drive now is to bring forward by more than one year the technology road map delivery of high performance, matched by lower cost materials that will enable grid parity to be achieved with DSC arrays integrated into steel roofing.
This would make the Tata/Dyesol products independent of the need for feed-in tariffs.
To date, traditional solar products from China that come closest to achieving grid parity can only perform well in high solar flux solar farms and do not perform adequately as building products, leaving this rapidly growing market sector open for significant exploitation by Tata/Dyesol DSC technology.