Solterra plans initial target of 1GW production line
Quotes taken from Stephen Squires (President and CEO) of Solterra Renewable Technologies, Inc.) written article for INTERPV magazine, Oct. 2009 issue, P. 54-56.
Comments by Puravida19.
1. Solterra “will scale up Quantum Dot synthesis to achieve 100 kg/day production.”
Solterra plans to mass produce Quantum Dots in conjunction with technology and improved processes from Access2Flow, a European company that has created a way to just that. Solterra has retained the rights to any improvements in the process of producing quantum dots that are discovered in the project. The ability to produce Quantum Dots becomes a matter of scale – the number of machines added to the production line, because the ingredients are all low cost and readily available.
2.“This QD output will become solar cell target for operation at the initial target of 100 meters per minute.”
Amazingly, this is the minimal projected production for a Solterra production line. Mr. Squires states “our qdot cell design is based upon simple roll-to-roll print processing that has been around for many years. Even 20-year-old equipment runs 300 m per min and today’s newer machines easily exceed 600 m per minute. If you had a machine capable of printing money at 600 m per minute would you operate it at 10 m per minute? I think not. It’s not being done because up until qdot solar comes online, it simply cannot be done.
3.“At a nominal work schedule of 5 days per week and 8 hours per day, this will create an expandable output of well over 1Gigawatt (1000 Megawatts) per year in solar cell production.”
What if we run the production line 2 shifts?
What if we run the production line at 600 m per minute?
1 GW x 2 shifts x 6 times speed = 12 GW per year from one production line.
4.“This will enable the largest, but minimally complex solar lines in the industry, with production technology for both the quantum dot production and the solar cell line that are globally scalable and repeatable.”
Hague Corp. will produce and profit from Quantum Dots. They are responsible for ramping up production to initially 100 kg per day. Until now, Squires says, “all the qdot manufacturers combined have only produced less than 100 kg per year.” Hague will dominate the Qdot arena. To paraphrase Mr. Squires, if you can print money with one machine, why wouldn’t you use 600?
Solterra will produce Solar Panels by the roll. They could be shipped elsewhere for finishing into a casing and mounting system closer to the project site of large area grids that is the market Solterra is targeting. Or, the roll could be cut to panels to size and then shipped to the appropriate continent for final assembly. This system is lower cost for Solterra as a startup, especially because the money is in the panels, not the covering. It allows more profit and customization for the independent Assembler and Installers, and therefore, exponentially, more uses for our panels compared to other makes.
AI
