LITTLETON, Colo.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Ascent Solar Technologies, Inc. (NASDAQ:ASTI) (BSX:AKC) announced today that the Ascent Solar alliance that has been collaborating for several months in response to President George W. Bush’s Solar America Initiative, plans to produce an entirely new series of “plug and play” products for the nation’s commercial and residential building markets. Using Ascent Solar’s thin film photovoltaic (PV) technology on plastics, large photovoltaic modules in roll formats will be integrated with various construction materials to produce multiple Building Integrated PV (BIPV) products for commercial and residential applications. The new “plug-and-play” module designs should eliminate the vast amount of wires, cables, connectors, junction boxes, and conduit required in current systems. Ascent Solar expects that PV system integration will be reduced from weeks to days for systems as large as 600kW and that, based upon U.S. Department of Energy cost models, the cost to produce electricity will be reduced from 20¢/kWhr to 5¢/kWhr. Led by Ascent Solar, the alliance developing the new BIPV products and associated manufacturing processes consists of leaders from academia, industry, and government laboratories, including: PERMACITY SOLAR Institute of Energy Conversion (University of Delaware) Colorado School of Mines University of Texas ITN Energy Systems Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (U.S. Department of Energy) IBIS Associates Ascent Solar President and CEO Matthew Foster states, “The potential to create enormous demand in the market for PV generated electricity is real. As the cost of solar generated electricity approaches that of fossil fuel generated power, BIPV growth could expand exponentially. The Solar America timeline and cost targets show the potential for this happening as early as 2010. Our vision is to see the day when BIPV will become pervasive as a building and construction material much like plywood is today and become affordable for all in need of low cost electricity from a natural resource that is free, abundant, and available to everyone.” The key to realizing the day when low cost PV systems produce electricity more cost effectively than fossil fuels is low cost manufacturing of modules and system components. Ascent Solar plans to employ manufacturing methodologies similar to the successes in the semiconductor industry by scaling manufacturing equipment and processes to run faster and wider. Monolithic integration of cells into modules during manufacturing should completely eliminate the entire back-end assembly operation of today. Ascent Solar estimates that the new BIPV roll formats can offer reductions in the number of discrete modules by as much as 90% for a typical PV system deployment, and provide flexibility to cover up to 35% more area. When combined with the “plug and play” product improvements, the multiplying effect on cost should be remarkable. Ascent Solar is currently developing a 1.5MW production line for terrestrial, space and near-space applications. This production capacity will produce prototypes of the new products and demonstrate the large area manufacturing process. The wide web manufacturing processes are expected to become the production baseline for future manufacturing scale up to 100MW capacities, which are currently envisioned to begin by 2010. To accelerate these new product and manufacturing innovations, Ascent Solar submitted a proposal to the U.S. Department of Energy on October 2, 2006, in response to the Solar America Initiative. Announcement of awards to as many as 15-20 industry teams are anticipated by year end. About Ascent Solar Technologies: Ascent Solar Technologies, Inc. is a developer of state-of-the-art, thin-film photovoltaic materials and modules and is located in Littleton, Colorado.
