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In a new 200-megawatt factory, expected to employ up to 500 people, AVA Solar Inc. will start production by the end of next year on the pioneering, patented technology developed by mechanical engineering Professor W.S. Sampath at Colorado State. Based on the average household usage, 200 megawatts will power 40,000 US homes.

Produced at less than $1 per watt, the panels promises to dramatically reduce the cost of generating solar electricity and could power homes and businesses around the globe with clean energy for roughly the same cost as traditionally generated electricity.

Larry Edward Penley, president of Colorado State University, said:
"Professor Sampath's technology has global reach and local impact, which is part of our strategic mission at Colorado State University. He is solving a huge global challenge while at the same time providing jobs for the region's economy. Clean energy research is one of CSU's strengths, which is why we've formed an academic Clean Energy Supercluster to begin to rapidly move these types of technological advancements into the commercial market."

Sampath has developed a continuous, automated manufacturing process for solar panels using glass coating with a cadmium telluride thin film instead of the standard high-cost crystalline silicon. Because the process produces high efficiency devices (ranging from 11 percent to 13 percent) at a very high rate and yield, it can be done much more cheaply than with existing technologies. The cost to the consumer could be as low as $2 per watt, about half the current cost of solar panels, and competitive with cost of power from the electrical grid in many parts of the world. In addition, this solar technology need not be tied to a grid, so it can be affordably installed and operated in nearly any location.

Sampath has spent the past 16 years perfecting the technology and patiently waiting for the market for solar technology to mature. In that time, annual global sales of photovoltaic technology have grown to approximately 2 gigawatts or two billion watts - roughly a $6 billion industry. Demand has increased nearly 40 percent a year for each of the past five years - a trend that analysts and industry experts expect to continue.

By 2010, solar cell manufacturing is expected to be a $25 billion-plus industry.

Prof. Sampath, director of Colorado State's Materials Engineering Laboratory, said:
"This technology offers a significant improvement in capital and labour productivity and overall manufacturing efficiency. The current market is over $5 billion annually and additional markets are developing."

Pascal Noronha, president and chief executive officer of AVA Solar, said:
"We have an unusual situation in that there is more demand than there is supply. The world has an energy problem. The time is right to solve this problem with a green solution, especially given that electricity consumption is going to grow astronomically."

Sampath - along with two affiliate faculty members and former students of his, Kurt Barth and Al Enzenroth - formed AVA Solar in January to commercialise the technology. Since then, the company has raised two rounds of funding and recently was awarded a $3 million grant from the US Department of Energy's Solar America Initiative.

The US Energy Policy Act of 2005 provides incentives for purchasing and using solar equipment until the end of 2008 - a credit equal to 30 percent of qualifying expenditures for purchase of commercial solar installations.

"The key to expanding the US market is to lower manufacturing costs so more people can afford the technology," Sampath said.