PHOTON International The Photovoltaic Magazine

Evergreen's four-string furnace to remain prototype for now

String-ribbon cell and module manufacturer Evergreen Solar Inc. says it has successfully completed a research project enabling the growth of four ribbons from one single furnace.

	© Evergreen Solar Inc.
Potential: While a successfully completing research on a four-string prototype furnace, Evergreen has no immediate plans for the process.

But the product of the three-year undertaking, funded by a $2 million grant from the advanced technology program of the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), is not expected to be put to use by the Massachusetts-based company any time soon.

According to Mark Farber, Evergreen's vice president of marketing and business development, who stepped down from his role as CEO and president in December (see PI 1/2004, p. 38), the new crystal growth process is still »a very early-stage R&D project.« Despite its potential to lower production costs, he says the new process will be kept in a hiatus-mode for now. Instead, the company is concentrating on moving from single-string to double-string furnaces (see PI 1/2003, p. 21). The company has ordered 100 new double-string furnaces and retrofitted 20 of its original single-string furnaces to doubles. No decision has been made on what to do with the remaining 40 single-string furnaces.

Evergreen also expects to finish installing a second production line this year to increase the current 2.6 MW capacity to between 10 and 14 MW. According to PHOTON International's annual cell survey (see article, p. 46), Evergreen produced up to full capacity in 2003, and is aiming at 8.4 MW in 2004.