Manufacturing improvements in the Photovoltaic Manufacturing Technology (PVMaT) Project

The Photovoltaic Manufacturing Technology Project (PVMaT) is a government/industry research and development (R and D) partnership between the US federal government (through the US Department of Energy [DOE]) and members of the US PV industry. The goals of PVMaT are to help the US PV industry improve module manufacturing processes and equipment; accelerate manufacturing cost reductions for PV modules, balance-of-systems components, and integrated systems; increase commercial product performance and reliability; and enhance the investment opportunities for substantial scale-ups of US-based PV manufacturing plant capacities. The approach for PVMaT has been to cost-share risk taking by industry as it explores new manufacturing options and ideas for improved PV modules and other components, advances system and product integration, and develops new system designs, all of which will lead to overall reduced system life-cycle costs for reliable PV end products. The PVMaT Phase 4A module manufacturing R and D projects are just being completed and initial results for the work directed primarily to module manufacture are reported in this paper. Fourteen new Phase 5A subcontracts have also just been awarded and planned R and D areas for the ten focused on module manufacture are described. Finally, government funding, subcontractor cost sharing, and a comparison of the relative efforts by PV technology throughout the PVMaT project are presented