It was Wednesday 16^th of December 2009, the third day of the iLEAD batch 4 Overseas Study Mission in Shanghai. We would be visiting Suntech Power Holdings, the largest solar PhotoVoltaic (PV) module maker in the world and Suzhou International Science Park. This time around it was my turn to represent the iLEAD team in visiting Suntech, the company that I proposed to visit and did my research on prior of coming to Beijing and Shanghai. We started our journey to the Suntech headquarter located at Wuxi at around 730am from the Riverside Hotel. The journey took around 2 hours, where everyone savoured as much time as possible to take short naps inside the bus. We reached the Suntech headquarter at Wuxi around 930am. The main building was magnificent where the thousands of solar PV modules was installed on the headquarter to generate the electricity needed for the entire building’s daily consumption. We were received by Mr Kevin Wang, the marketing manager and his assistant, Yina Fang. The company visit started with the brief introduction of the iLEAD team done by me followed by a PowerPoint presentation by Kevin Wang.

Solar power currently constitutes around 18% of global electricity generation, along with other sources of energy such as nuclear, coal, wind, geothermal, and biomass. One great advantage about solar energy, along with wind and geothermal is that these sources do not ‘contribute’ to the carbon dioxide emission. Kevin also showed us the chart of the coal reserve period, with USA having enough supply of only 250 years, Europe 50 years and the rest of the world having only 130 years of supply. World natural gas supply, at the current amount harvested, can only last for 55 years, while world oil reserve will only last for 45 years. These estimations does not take into account the acceleration rate of the world energy consumption due to exponentially growing world population. Solar energy is suitable for the large populations who stay in sunny regions which receive consistent amount of sunlight radiation throughout the whole year, especially during the peak hour such as afternoon time where air conditioning consumes most energy and solar modules are at its best performance. Solar energy usage and potential is very much geographical and demographical dependent. In addition, Kevin also explained to us the 2 different types of solar modules currently in the market, that are solar thermal modules (which captures heat from the Sun to drive turbines) and PV modules (which consists of semiconductor materials that uses Sunlight’s photons to excite and energize electrons to higher energy levels and generate electric current).

The two challenges in commercializing the solar PV modules are grid parity and cost of conventional electricity. Currently it takes two times the price to produce energy using PV modules as compared to grid. The retail rate for the electricity is different for each country and that would the affect the usage of solar energy. Currently many governments worldwide, especially China contribute as the main PV industry driver. The positive cycle, starting by the government support through green energy policies and grants would create high demand of PV modules in the market, and this will in turn leads to reduced marginal production cost which will create more government purchase and support. It is expected that by year 2012, several countries will reach grid parity, where the price of electricity generated by PV modules and grid would be the same.

After the brief macroeconomic view of the world’s solar energy industry, Kevin gave everybody an introduction about Suntech Power Holdings. The company was founded in 2001 by Dr Shi Zhengrong, listed in NYSE on December 14^th, 2005, market capitalization of 2.70 billion USD, achieved 1gigawatt of production capacity in 2008. Suntech is the largest module maker in the world and will be the number one PV cell producer in the world by 2009. In 2006, Suntech achieved 60MW of PV production capacity. The number doubled to 150MW in 2005, 270MW in 2006, 540MV in 2007 and the unprecedented 1GW in 2008. As PV module was mainly made of silicon (Si), Suntech engaged many business partners in sourcing the most abundant element on Earth. The company engaged MAMC, DC chemicals and GCL in sourcing the materials and engaged with LDK, Gentech as well as MAMC in ingoting and wafering the PV modules. The conventional method to process and purify raw Si is by using the Siemens process, where Si is heated into it gas form under an equilibrium environment chamber and then condensed to form the 99.9999% pure Si. Europe currently is the biggest market for Suntech and other major competitors such as Sharp, Kyocera Solar, Sanyo, BP Solar etc, contributing to about 80% of sources of revenue for Suntech. USA, meanwhile, represents the fastest growing market, where Suntech planned to set up a production facility at Phoenix, Arizona due to the cheap source of Si located there.

PV products wise, University of New South Wales (UNSW) is currently the leading university in solar PV research, created a Si PV module of 24.7% conversion rate in 2008. Suntech’s strong R&D team collaborates closely with UNSW’s researchers, as currently Suntech’s highest efficiency PV module is only 19%. The reason of the low conversion rate is due to the physical properties of Si, where Si can only capture a certain bandwidth of the Sunlight. Actually, the main issue in penetrating solar markets worldwide does not depend very much on the efficiency of the PV module, as the key issue is mainly about how to commercialize the 30 year old technology of efficiency rate around 17% to 18%. As such, research collaborations and sourcing of cheap silicon remain as the greatest challenges for Suntech and most of its competitors in its continuous effort of lowering the cost of each product and attain higher economies of scale. The company is working closely with Si purifier companies in researching other more efficient purifying process othan the Siemens process. Besides that, the development of other potential PV cells such as Cadmium Telluride (CdTe) solar cells and Copper Indium Gallium Selenium (CIGS) cells are examined and monitored closely.

On the initial phase of the founding of Suntech, Dr Shi Zhengrong, the founder of Suntech, raised a seed capital of USD 6 million from his own bank account and the Wuxi district local government in 2001. Initially he only wanted to produce PV modules in a small scale, but sometimes luck just come by in a timely way. After one year in 2002, a solar energy company based in USA went bankrupt. Dr Shi quickly capitalized on the event, auctioned for the company and in the end bought the doomed company at a fairly low price. Suntech then acquired the existing factories, inventories and equipped that were necessary to expand his business. Soon enough, Suntech went public listing in Nasdaq. And then the rest is history.

After the PowerPoint presentation, there comes the questions and answers session. One of us asked an interesting question as in whether Suntech has any wind-solar hybrid project which can maximize the natural clean sources of energy of a particular area. Besides that, we asked Kevin to further elaborate to us on the other factors affecting the adoption rate of solar energy of different countries, and why Singapore does not witness the widespread usage of solar energy compared to other countries. Kevin explained to us that besides the geographical and demographical factors, another great issue would be the types of housing buildings available in a particular country. For example, it is quite hard for cities such as Hyderabad in India and Singapore to adopt solar energy even though they receive sunlight throughout the whole year. This is because these two cities’ housing buildings are mainly flats, apartments or condominiums. Substantial amount of square meters are required for installation of PV modules and each of the buildings can only allocate small areas for the installation on the roof which cannot cater for all the residents. However, housing in Europe and USA, which receive seasonal sunlight exposure, mainly consists of single lot, double story or bungalows. This enables each resident to be able to install PV modules of their own that can provide a considerable amount of electricity for individual home’s consumption.

After answering a few of our questions, Kevin took us for a tour on the Suntech’s production facility right beside right inside the main building. The production of PV cells and modules are as follows: high purity solar grade silicon à polycrystalline ingot à multicrystalline silicon wafer à multicrystalline Si solar cells. Too bad, photography was not allowed in the production building. The first stage was the cleaning stage, where high purity silicon is cleared of dust and foreign materials. The second stage would be the texturization, where chemical bath treatment was applied to the silicon to corrode its surface and increase its surface area. Monocrystallines are more uniform and thus have higher conversion rate of 2% compared to polycrystallines. Then, the third stage would the phosphorus diffusion stage, where phosphorus would be diffused into the silicon wafers under 800 degrees celcius in 8 minutes to give the wafers the electrical conducting capabilities. The fourth stage would be the phosphorus silicon glass (PSG) removal of the wafers. After that, there comes the fifth stage, the plasma enhanced chemical vapour decomposition stage, where screen printing and anti reflective coating was applied to the wafer layers so that it can be handled by human hand, instead of machine. During the sixth stage, the metallization stage, metallic alloy was applied to both the wafer surfaces so that electricity generated could be harnessed. Next comes the testing stage, the seventh stage where flashes of light were applied to the finalized wafers. The red flash was used for physical inspection of any damages and defection, while white flash was used to test the conversion rate of each wafers.

Last but not least, before we left Suntech, we took a great group photo together with Kevin with the giant solar panel behind us. A big thank you to Mr Kevin Wang for his hospitality and patience with us during the visit. It was a real eye opener visit to Suntech, and I was very glad to find out a lot more about solar power as the ideal clean energy for the future generation, and how a company such as Suntech plays a big role in the process and contribute to the environment. The best is yet to come for Suntech and solar industry.

Tags: clean tech, Shanghai, solar energy, Suntech Power Holdings, Wuxi

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