Lumet
Assembly Line
The Solar Breakthrough That Could Help the U.S. Compete With China
The new technology comes from an Israeli startup that promises to simplify one of the most cumbersome steps in solar manufacturing and cut costs by reducing the amount of silver needed to capture sunlight on the panels. The startup, called Lumet, is the brainchild of Benny Landa, who founded the company that developed the first digital printing press. That company was sold to HP for $830 million in the early 2000s. Lumet is working with Bank of America to raise hundreds of millions of dollars in the coming months, Landa said.
South Korea’s Hanwha Group says it will be the first company to use Lumet’s technology. Hanwha’s Qcells unit, one of the biggest solar-panel makers outside China, is building a multibillion-dollar solar supply chain in Georgia. The company expects the financial savings and performance gains to help it compete with low-cost products from the world’s biggest producer.
The main building blocks in solar panels are polysilicon wafers, which are treated with chemicals and silver to produce solar cells that can collect energy from the sun. Those cells are connected to get finished modules. The step that uses silver and is being overhauled by Lumet is called metallization. It is one of the most expensive parts of cell assembly. The process uses screen printing techniques that rely on squeegeeing a silver paste through a mesh screen in a process similar to stenciling, then drying it out. The silver is coated on the cell in ultrathin shapes, known as fingers, for capturing sunlight.