Great expectations from Start-up plans solar manufacturing in 30 MW/year micro solar module assembly facilities located in underserved communicates, via public-private partnerships.
An ambitious startup, CHERP, seeks to launch a new ‘no hot spot’ panel, using non-profit micro solar module assembly facilities, to be distributed across disadvantaged communities. CHERP stands for Community Home Energy Revolution Project. In a presentation hosted by Seneca Solar, CHERP put forth their nationwide vision to deploy 1,000 factories, each producing 100,000 solar modules per year. Start-up plans solar manufacturing, CHERP says each turnkey facility will cost about $6 million to put in place and will employ approximately 91 people. The business plan requires public funding to support the construction of each facility, and seeks to combine 501C3 non-profit with for profit models. The group hopes that these facilities will be able to feed their local market’s solar panel demand, installed by local crews, thus creating a virtuous cycle – keeping cash local, and the economy healthy.
CHERP is seeking local 501C3 partners and investment groups with a tax appetite to develop these facilities. During the presentation, the company suggested that their module would have the lowest degradation and highest possible efficiency produced with regularly available components – a result of eliminating reverse-bias with their novel ‘no hot spot’ hardware design. Start-up plans solar manufacturing, CHERP also says the modules have the ability to shut themselves down in milliseconds if they don’t sense an inverter – due to a ‘mass trick based on Einstein’s original equations’. Part of the benefit of the new design is that the units won’t have arc faults. The group published a paper in the IEEE Journal of Photovoltaics in July covering the result of a solar panel being tested with the new technique.
Source: This news is originally published by pv-magazine-usa