PPG Wins DOE Award to Help Automate PV Module Manufacturing
PITTSBURGH – PPG Industries’ industrial coatings business has received a $2.1 million award from the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) to help design and pilot a rapid photovoltaic (PV) module assembly process that uses automation to eliminate time and labor from the current assembly process.
PPG will use the funding, delivered through the DOE’s SunShot Initiative, to develop liquid encapsulants that will enable PV modules to be manufactured without the need for capital-intensive laminators. PPG will match each dollar committed by the DOE, resulting in a total public-private investment of approximately $4.3 million in the project.
Andy Meshanko, PPG Market Development Manager, Industrial Coatings, said, “With the proposed manufacturing approach, we expect to increase module throughput by a factor of four at half the capital expense of the existing process. With these cost savings and more efficient module designs, we can advance the goal of achieving grid parity for solar power.”
PPG is partnering with Flextronics International Inc., a leading global solar module manufacturer, to design and test a pilot line at Flextronics’ Milpitas, CA, facility that will produce 60- and 72-cell modules.
The SunShot Initiative, which is funded through the DOE’s Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy (EERE), seeks to make solar energy fully cost-competitive with traditional energy sources by the end of the decade. The PPG award is part of a $13 million investment in five projects to strengthen domestic solar manufacturing and speed commercialization of efficient, affordable PV and concentrating solar power technologies.
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