Solar Factories

One of the big issues with solar power has always been cost; producing all those panels makes the up-front expense of a major solar project dauntingly huge. So I’m not surprised to see a growing link between the solar field and the semiconductor industry.

Chipmakers have always been way out in front when it comes to manufacturing technology. Sure, designing a microprocessor is tough work, but that’s only half the job. The other part of the business, which doesn’t get nearly as much attention, is the chip factory where some of the world’s most complicated products are mass-produced. Designing a cost-effective method for turning out products with features that approach the atomic level comes close to a dark art, so if any field can figure out how to make photovoltaic cells affordable, it’s going to be the chip guys.

Today I heard that Intel Corp. is spinning off a solar start-up unit it’s been incubating, SpectraWatt Inc., which will begin building its own advanced production site later this year. Intel noted that the cost of producing electricity with solar power is about twice that of conventional methods, but the advanced solar technologies it is working on could eventually make solar comparable in cost.

And another chip company, Cypress Semiconductor, owns a majority stake in the solar cell company SunPower Corp., and is developing ways to produce the cells in its chip factories. Cypress CEO T.J. Rodgers has said that producing solar cells in a chip plant offers better returns that all but the most advanced microchip designs, and that his own company will probably be better known for solar technology than chips in a few years. The long-term goal, according to SunPower, is to halve the cost of turning out solar cells by 2012.

I wonder if Moore’s Law, the famous observation that the processing power on a chip will double every 18 months or so, has a corollary for the solar market.