Manufacturing boost for holographic solar panels

Prism Solar Technologies has acquired a manufacturing plant in New York that it will use to make holographic photovoltaic solar cells.

The company has spent $3.75m on the factory in Highland, New York, previously owned by a Panasonic LCD manufacturing subsidiary called Plasmaco. The site is a 93,000-square foot facility with a wet lab, glass cleaning facilities, clean rooms and machine shops. Prism said the plant will eventually produce solar panels with a combined generating capacity of 60 megawatts each year, along with holographic film that can be used by other firms to build 1,000 megawatts-worth of solar cells each year.

The purchase funding included a $1m grant secured by Congressman Maurice Hinchey through the Solar Energy Consortium, a non-profit body in the Hudson Valley area where the plant is located. Prism hopes to bring 400 jobs to the area over the next five years.

Prism's products use holographic film to selectively diffract incoming sunlight before it strikes the photovoltaic (PV) material that generates electricity. The company says that this technique greatly improves the efficiency of the panel, increasing the output of the expensive PV material required to convert light into electricity.

Prism already operates a manufacturing plant in Tucson, Arizona, which it opened last July. That plant also produces 60MW of modules per year.