Solar Innovation to Support
'Energiewende' |
Dresden,
Germany, August 21, 2012 - Federal Environment Minister Peter
Altmaier, along with Saxony's Prime Minister, Stanislaw Tillich, visited
Heliatek GmbH in Dresden on August 17, 2012. Heliatek's
innovative products will support the energy transformation towards
sustainability in new ways never thought possible before.
Heliatek manufactures
energy harvesting components made of flexible solar films based on organic
semiconductor materials. The company inaugurated its first production facility
last March in Dresden in the presence of Prime Minister Tillich. The
state-of-the-art manufacturing line is now up and running, with the plant
carrying out the scheduled trial production. This visit emphasizes the German
Government's commitment to continue to provide extensive support for the
research and development of environmentally friendly energy
technologies.
Cutting-edge
technology enables solar energy harvesting components
Thibaud Le Séguillon, CEO of Heliatek GmbH, and Dr. Martin Pfeiffer,
co-founder and CTO, gave Federal Environment Minister Peter Altmaier and Prime
Minister of Saxony Stanislaw Tillich a tour of the production facility. As
Heliatek is on schedule with commissioning and trial operations for production,
the company was able to present its guests with finished solar films. "Our first
customers and partners are early adopters. We work with them closely to make our
product a de-facto standard as solar energy harvesting components," explains CEO
Thibaud Le Séguillon and continues: "Energiewende goes beyond replacing nuclear
power plants with wind and solar farms. Heliatek solar films will be used in
applications never served before by traditional PV." Thanks to the film's
ultra-light weight, transparency and superior performance, Heliatek's customers
will be able to integrate the solar films, for example, into building and
construction materials, car-roofs and street furniture. The first solar films
coming out of the line will be used for concrete façade projects as well as for
pilots and prototypes with partners.
Sustainable market growth
requires investors with a strategic eye
"Our production is ready,
now we intend to raise an additional €60 million from current and new investors
to significantly increase the capacity", says CEO Thibaud Le
Séguillon about the next step for Heliatek. "We are operating the world's first
production line in which organic solar films are manufactured in a roll-to-roll
process using vacuum deposition. Our production readiness is a major milestone
and allows us to offer our energy harvesting components to our partners for
application development by Q3 2012 as scheduled," adds Le Séguillon.
Dr. Martin Pfeiffer,
co-founder and CTO of Heliatek, states: "Our production process is
similar to the one used by OLED today, but with the addition of the roll-to-roll
element. This is important to mitigate the production ramp-up risks. Heliatek is
the recognized world leader in OPV technology. We have an independently
confirmed cell efficiency of 10.7 %, a product which passed IEC lifetime tests
in our laboratories, and external measurement data that confirms the superior
harvesting factor compared to other PV technologies. Our chemistry and physics
R&D labs allow us to continuously extend our lead in organic photovoltaics
and to improve our already strong patent portfolio; it covers our in-house
developed and synthesized molecules, our cell structure and even some of our
processes. That's how we are creating a highly defendable entry barrier for
anyone trying to copy us."
Federal Environment
Minister Peter Altmaier concluded by saying that Heliatek was an impressive
example for the large development potential that the photovoltaic technology
still has to offer. He also said that Germany may not be able to compete with
many countries for the cheapest products, however, Germany is at the forefront
when it comes to competing for the best technology, and for state-of-the-art and
ecological solutions. Prime Minister of Saxony Stanislaw Tillich agreed by
saying that companies like Heliatek belong to a new generation of the solar
industry and are the best evidence that Saxony is on top of German technology
development.
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