Executive Summery

After 25 years of development, photovoltaic (PV) technology is on the verge of becoming competitive with commercial retail electricity and of entering the energy mix as the first substantial power source that is environmentally and economically sound. Only a handful of world’s companies are actively exploring photovoltaics, which has the potential togrow to a $20 billion market and create thousands of jobs by the year 2010. Among them is US basedSolar Thin Films (STF), which is involved in the commercialization of the latest generation of thin-filmPV technologies, such as copper-indium-gallium-diselenide (CIGS) manufacturing equipment, as well asits standard amorphous silicon (a-Si) technology. STF markets at this time full turnkey manufacturing facilities to produce both a-Si and CIGS thin-film PV modules, which represent an optimum way to enter the thin-film PV manufacturing industry.

Personnel from STF has been involved in research and development, designing and building manufacturing equipment and operating manufacturing facilities for a-Si thin-films for nearly 25 years. The team in place at STF developed various equipment such as the RF-glow discharge process using a box carrier, which has become the industry manufacturing standard for a-Si. As a result of this and other experiences, and the company’s continuing development efforts, a “next generation” turnkey a-Si and CIGS manufacturing facilities are offered for sale. Modules from such facilities, depending on labor costs, can be manufactured between for less than $1 per Watt, a significantly lower cost than competing crystalline and polycrystalline technologies.

STF offers various lines of modular thin-film PV factories. The profitability of thin-film manufacturing facilities is based on the manufacturing cost of these modules. Using a labor cost in developed countries, STF guarantees that modules depending on labor costs can be manufactured for less then $1 per Watt. Inaddition to its standard amorphous silicon production lines, STF offers a manufacturing facilities tomanufacture CIGS-based thin-film PV modules. The CIGS technology, the latest thin-film technology, isinitially offered with a guaranteed efficiency of 8%. This efficiency is expected to be increased to 12% bythe year 2010. Both thin-film manufacturing operations, in the basic setup, use 635 mm x 1245 mm glasssubstrates. Depending on efficiency and technology used, output is between 40W (a-Si) and 65W (CIGS)per module.

The Company: Thin-film PV Module Manufacturing Experience

The most of the thin-film based photovoltaic module manufacturing experience in the world is with amorphous silicon. The total cumulative world production of a-Si between 1983 and 2003 is approximately 100MW. Of this a-Si production, approximately 50MW was produced in manufacturingfacilities constructed with the participation of STF personnel.

The history of construction and the status of the various facilities that STF has been involved in is shownin Table 1. As a demonstration of the durability of STF thin-film manufacturing equipment, the facility inLens - France has been operating for over 22 years. The Taiwan facility Sinonar has been concentrated onthe production of small modules for solar calculators and toys. It absorbed the Port Jervis, New York andBirmingham, Alabama equipment, and today produces close to 20% of the world’s PV chips for calculators and toys. The STF factory designs are optimized to provide:

• Cost effective, high materials utilization vacuum processing
• Durable, user-friendly equipment that can be effectively operated with trained, unskilled labor,even in hostile environments
• Built-in redundancy for minimum disruption in servicing

From these factories there is a meaningful amount of manufacturing statistics. The manufacturing cost of about 6% stabilized a-Si modules at full capacity of operation averaged out at $1/W in developed countries (USA) and at 90¢/W in low labor cost countries (China). From the installation experience of the numerous manufacturing facilities, it could be doubtfully concluded that a-Si turnkey manufacturing equipment can be delivered in eight months after receipt of a down payment, and full production capacitycan be achieved four months after installation of the equipment.

Solar Thin Films, Inc (STF) personnel has been responsible for the delivery of numerous complete thin-film PV facilities, as well as individual components of PV manufacturing equipment around the world.