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Technology Stocks : ESLR - Evergreen Solar
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From: Pullin-GS4/4/2006 4:56:42 PM
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Non-silicon Solar play
AXTI is pulling investors from Silicon-based solar plays such as ESLR (Recently published it's loss of primary Silicon suplier). AXTI manufactures Gallium substrates used by super-efficient photovoltaic systems in satalites. In the past due to GA-substate solar has been very low-volume because of high costs. However with new solar applications on the horizon which need the most wattage per square-inch, cost is no longer the driving factor.

For example:

Hybrid car solar is just now starting to make some headlines.
The real-estate available for solar-cell placement is very limited on a car. Having a cell with 50-100% more capacity for same area currently seen by the best silicon-based solar technologies is justification IN-AND-BY-ITSELF to go with a GA-substrate cell technology for hybrid cars. The price premium for a several-hundred watt GA-substrait photovoltaic system might be considered a non-issue when dealing with the overall price of the car?
A silicon photovoltaic system is cheap, but it can only deliver half to two-thirds of what GA substrate can for the same given square-foot. For space-constrained implementations the extra wattage delivered could very well be worth the added cost.

Translation: Do we have a market now for GA-substrate solar cells? Satellites (the only use for it currently) are fine and all, but you don't see many people going out to buy satellites. Watt/for/watt comparisons of SI to GA is heavily in favor or SI by a huge margin. But does that really matter in the hybrid-car application where performance is key?
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