A Bright Idea! Using Kepware in Solar (Photovoltaic) Production

This is a highly competitive and secretive market. Improving yield, quality and efficiency in photovoltaic production can make a great difference in the scalability of the process. Equipment communications is essential to knowing what is going on. A new manufacturer of high performance thin film photovoltaic (PV) modules is scaling up their proprietary semiconductor technology for low cost high volume manufacturing. The modules will be deployed in large scale solar PV power plants and will efficiently tap into the vast energy potential of the sun. They will produce environmentally friendly renewable electricity that is economically competitive with electric power generated from conventional fossil fuels. This PV manufacturer is designing and building highly automated continuous flow factories that are optimized to their semiconductor process. The thin film PV modules will use a fraction of the raw materials and will require far less energy for manufacturing than conventional crystalline silicon PV. They believe their cost competitive renewable energy product will be an attractive solution to help meet the World's shifting energy demands. Their technology comes from the DOE (Department of Energy). First developed by NREL (the National Renewable Energy Laboratory), the technology delivers a world record 16.5% efficient cadmium telluride (CdTe) solar cell and the technology is ready to go into commercial production. The previous efficiency record was 15.8 percent for a cadmium telluride cell -- a record that has stood since 1992. Cadmium telluride represents one of the most promising technologies for so-called thin film solar cells. In the thin film manufacturing process, layers of differing electricity-producing materials are applied sequentially to a glass, plastic or steel backing. The cadmium telluride (CdTe) process is different from previous cells and benefits from new understanding of the operation of solar cells. The cell utilizes new materials that interact chemically with the cadmium telluride to improve adhesion, light collection and electronic properties. The process of production involves the creation of layers on a substrate in a vapor deposition process. This is performed in a vacuum environment and involves an ION Gun to direct the various chemicals to be deposited. The entire process requires a variety of automation controls from various vendors. Vacuum Pumps and their controls, Vapor Deposition technologies under separate controls. There are temperature, pressure, motion and power controls. Managing this process is as much art as it is physics. And, when the combination is just right, a high efficiency Photovoltaic cell is produced. The typical layers in an ION deposition PV Cell This is an energy intensive process in addition to being a complex control environment. It's important to manage costs in power and scrap, and to keep the process productive by reducing unwanted downtime. The overall feedback process is a long one, requiring many processes to be performed in order to create the finished product, at which time you have the opportunity to analyze the result for efficiency and quality. Then, changes are made for the next run, and new results are analyzed. Data collection and supervisory monitoring is essential to generating the information necessary to understand the how and why of a result. The PV manufacturer has both HMI/SCADA and Historian solutions to aid in the data collection necessary for their analysis. The process and the automation solutions used is considered proprietary. The automation process is made up of equipment and systems from various controls manufacturers. The HMI/SCADA system and Historian needed to interface with them all. The manufacturer wanted to select a solution that integrated neatly, leveraging one interface to his various supervisory products, and collecting data through the various automation protocols he needed to support. Engineers at the site had a long history in automation, and had an excellent past experience with Kepware products. The current requirements were right up Kepware's alley - multiple protocols, multiple client interfaces, and the need for a product with the tools to monitor and diagnose any problems that may arise, on either the communications side or the client side. So, the choice was simple - Kepware is the fit for this application. The results are confidential. But, the manufacturer is quite satisfied with the performance and reliability of the communication layer. When asked, "What other factors helped you make the decision to deploy Kepware in your application?" The engineer cited several - Kepware is widely endorsed by both hardware vendors as well as software vendors. "It's hard to ignore that most of the market is using Kepware for communications." But more importantly he says, "We have always had great support from Kepware. I have grown to count on Kepware as a company that will help us today, and be there in the long run to help us in the future. I am convinced that Kepware will continue to adapt to coming technologies and that is a serious question with many other communication providers." The renewable energy business is just a small sliver of our overall energy consumption. These are the US Government statistics from 2006. Opportunity abounds! Return to Kepware Solution Chronicles Page »»