DuPont doubles energy production
DuPont announced plans to double production capacity for its market-leading DuPont™ Solamet® photovoltaic metallization pastes, based on strong, continued growth in the solar energy industry and accelerated demand for new materials that enable higher efficiency photovoltaic cells. As part of DuPont’s efforts to help reduce the world’s dependence on fossil fuels, the capacity increase is consistent with the company’s expectation that its sales of enabling innovations into photovoltaic applications will exceed $1 billion in 2011 and $2 billion by 2014.
“We are seeing extremely strong demand from our customers, while the supply of certain materials in the photovoltaic market has been tight,” said David B. Miller, president – DuPont Electronics & Communications. “This additional capacity expansion demonstrates our commitment to decreasing dependence on fossil fuels by meeting our customers’ needs for materials that increase the efficiency of solar cells and modules. By increasing efficiency, Solamet® paste helps reduce overall system costs, thereby making photovoltaic power more competitive with other forms of electricity generation.”
DuPont is applying the power of its integrated science to help reduce the world’s dependence on fossil fuels. DuPont has a range of market-leading innovations that address the renewable energy challenge, including enabling materials for photovoltaics, biofuels, renewably sourced materials and technologies engineered to improve energy efficiency.
The planned capacity expansion, which will more than double the production capacity for Solamet® products for the photovoltaic industry, involves DuPont Microcircuit Materials facilities in Manati, Puerto Rico; Dongguan, China; and Taoyuan, Taiwan. Completion of the work is expected in 2011. This is the second major Solamet® expansion in the last two years. In February 2009, DuPont announced it doubled production capacity at its European electronic materials manufacturing facility in Bristol, U.K.
DuPont™ Solamet® photovoltaic metallization pastes are made from silver and other materials, which collect electricity produced by the solar cell and transport it out of the cell. They play a critical role in how efficiently photovoltaic modules turn sunlight into electricity. The advances made by DuPont in the field of front- and back-side metallization contacts have resulted in significant efficiency gains for solar cell technology. In 1998, the efficiency of a crystalline silicon solar cell was approximately 10 percent. Today, these cells operate at close to 16 percent for multi-crystalline wafers, and at greater than 18 percent for monocrystalline wafers; a rise in efficiency that is partly due to the performance provided by the metallizations DuPont has developed. Higher module efficiency delivers more power from the same module, so even a fraction of a percent efficiency improvement can substantially increase the return on investment from a photovoltaic system.
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