Cadmium telluride PV module manufacturing at BP Solar

BP Solar has built a 10 MW capacity CdTe thin-film (Apollo(TM)) manufacturing plant in Fairfield, California. The plant is on the verge of commercialization and is expected to produce several megawatts of 61 x 155 cut (24 x 61-inch) thin-film modules (nominally 80 W) in 2001. This paper describes the basic Apollo process steps, tire recent advances made in the Apollo(R) CdTe technology, the state of the art CdTe reactor with its sophisticated design and control features and various techniques used to characterize the semiconductor materials. Module performance and reliability results are also summarized. Air NREL-confirmed module efficiency of 10.6% is reported for a 0.94 m(2) module with a maximum Power of 91.5 W. Indoor stress testing and outdoor performance test beds are described, and the data presented show good indoor stability under various stress conditions. Copyright (C) 2002 John Wiley Sons, Ltd.