BP Solar Closes Thin Film Operations [RE-wrenches]

[Joel Davidson]

Eric Smiley wrote:

> Who knows though. Spheral solar is almost in production <
> http://www.spheralsolar.com >.

In 1990 and 1991 Texan Instrument made several announcements about
commercializing their "spherical cell
technology." (Some of you may remember Eric Graf who quit Arco Solar to join
TI's solar group.) I think that TI's announcements were made to justify
increasing overall R&D spending during a period when TI was losing money and
to nurture the partnership between TI and Southern California Edison (SCE).
SCE invested in spherical in 1991 and even put a spherical cell solar module
on the SCE Rose Bowl parade float in 1992. After jointly spending over $10
million, TI and SCE sold spherical technology to Ontario Hydro in 1994 for
about $3 Million thinking they got a winner. SCE was glad to dump the loser.
Ontario Hydro tried to get into PV product sales but failed partly because
TI spherical technology was too expensive to bring to market. April 1997,
Ontario Hydro announced that they wanted to sell the spherical cell
technology. I told managers at SCE and Ontario Hydro to not buy spherical
cell technology because it could not compete with c-Si and a-Si, but it is
hard to convince people when they think they are right. July 2002,
Automation Tooling Systems announced plans to begin commercial manufacture
of the "next generation solar cells utilizing a breakthrough proprietary
photovoltaic technology named spherical solar technology." ...and the beat
goes on.

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