In two days, the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) has finalized two loan guarantees totaling USD 241 million for the solar photovoltaic (PV) industry.

On September 8th, 2011, the DOE finalized a USD 150 million loan guarantee to 1366 Technologies Inc. (Lexington, Massachusetts, U.S.) for the development of a multicrystalline silicon wafer manufacturing project to reduce production costs.

And on September 9th, 2011, the agency finalized a USD 90.6 million loan guarantee to a subsidiary of Cogentrix Energy LLC (Charlotte, North Carolina) to build a 30 MW high concentrating photovoltaic (HCPV) generation facility in Colorado.

“This project is a good example of how investments in American innovation can create jobs and make our manufacturing industry more competitive,” said U.S. Energy Secretary Steven Chu, referring to the loan guarantee to 1366 Technologies.

“This type of pioneering technology is needed to compete and thrive in the global race for solar manufacturing, a market worth billions of dollars and tens of thousands of jobs in the years ahead.”

Direct Wafer process could reduce wafer costs by 50%

The DOE awarded 1366 Technologies the loan guarantee to advance its Direct Wafer process, which the agency estimates could reduce the cost of manufacturing silicon wafers by 50%.

The Direct Wafer process reduces four separate manufacturing steps into a single continuous process wherein individual wafers are formed from a bath of molten silicon. A thin sheet of silicon is then frozen inside the furnace, and trimmed to size using lasers.

The DOE estimates that the process can take only 25 seconds, compared to up to three days for conventional batch processing. 1366 plans to build a facility using the process in Lexington, Massachusetts, under the first phase of the project.

The original development of the company's Direct Wafer technology was supported with a USD 4 million grant from the DOE's Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy.

Colorado facility larger than any operational CPV plant

Cogentrix's Colorado HCPV facility will be located in the U.S. state of Colorado near Alamosa, and will be much larger than any concentrating photovoltaic (CPV) plant currently in operation.

The plant will use Amonix HCPV systems (Seal Beach, California, U.S.), and Cogentrix will sell the electricity generated by the plant to Public Service Company of Colorado under a 20-year power purchase agreement (PPA).

Lengthy application process for loan guarantees

Under the Obama Administration, the DOE has made a large number of conditional commitments for loan guarantees to solar companies. However the approval process has been lengthy, and these two loan guarantees finalized represent some of the few guarantees that have been completed.

The program has also come under fire due to the choice of Solyndra LLC (Fremont, California, U.S.), which recently announced bankruptcy, as the first solar company to receive a loan guarantee under the Obama Administration.

2011-09-12| Courtesy: U.S. Department of Energy; Image source: Amonix Inc. | solarserver.com © Heindl Server GmbH

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