Nanosolar Inc. says it has now achieved or surpassed all 10 major tasks in completion of a $42 million grant from the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) for a Solar America Initiative (SAI) Technology Pathway Partnership (TPP) program.
Nanosolar was awarded the grant in 2006 to develop large-scale photovoltaic systems for commercial buildings that offer the best price-per-watt performance in the industry and received sign-off from the DOE in early April 2012.
The company says that over the course of the grant, it reached more than 13% cell power conversion efficiency on the production floor, which has been built out to a nameplate annual capacity of 115 MW.
It also deployed 3.4 MW of panels specifically for pilot installations for this project, a 550 kW deployment for Camp Perry based in Ohio, and a 2.88 MW deployment based in Oregon. In addition, as of December 2011, Nanosolar has produced, sold and deployed at 14 sites around the world.
Based on third-party estimates, Nanosolar will reach grid parity economics by 2015 as per DOE program goals. Nanosolar adds that it continues to collect performance and reliability data from third-party testing laboratories, and analysis of this data is carried out by independent engineering firms and institutions.
Nanosolar worked with three partners to complete this TPP project. Technology included inverter technology and systems optimization from Conergy AG and mounting technology from Sunlink LLC in a pilot installation by Suntechnics.
