{"id":14108,"date":"2013-08-08T09:48:36","date_gmt":"2013-08-08T04:18:36","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.greenworldinvestor.com\/?p=14108"},"modified":"2013-08-08T09:48:36","modified_gmt":"2013-08-08T04:18:36","slug":"ge-becomes-one-of-the-top-end-shareholders-of-first-solar","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/iiec-india.org\/greenworld\/2013\/08\/08\/ge-becomes-one-of-the-top-end-shareholders-of-first-solar\/","title":{"rendered":"Cadmium Telluride (Cd-Te) Technology on its Last Legs"},"content":{"rendered":"<h1>FSLR acquires GE&#8217;s Thin Film technology<\/h1>\n<p><strong>First Solar<\/strong> is the world&#8217;s leading producers of solar panels with a solar panel technology that differs from almost all of its <a href=\"http:\/\/www.greenworldinvestor.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/09\/images-4.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignright size-full wp-image-4950\" title=\"Thin Film Solar\" src=\"http:\/\/www.greenworldinvestor.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/09\/images-4.jpg\" alt=\"Thin Film Solar\" width=\"275\" height=\"183\" srcset=\"https:\/\/iiec-india.org\/greenworld\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/09\/images-4.jpg 275w, https:\/\/iiec-india.org\/greenworld\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/09\/images-4-113x75.jpg 113w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width:767px) 275px, 275px\" \/><\/a>competitors. First Solar Solar Panels use <em>Cadmium-Tellurium\u00a0<\/em><a href=\"http:\/\/www.greenworldinvestor.com\/2011\/07\/06\/thin-film-solar-all-about-panel-manufacturers-amorphous-siliconcigsstocksmaterial-technologyefficiency-and-costs\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Thin Film Solar<\/a>\u00a0technology, while the majority of the Solar Industry uses Crystalline Silicon Technology.\u00a0Despite stiff competition from the silicon technology and most of the thin film companies going bankrupt, First Solar has managed to hold on cutting costs and improving yields continuously.<\/p>\n<p>In fact First Solar used to have the lowest cost of solar panel production in the world.\u00a0However with the cost of silicon solar panels crashing by the day, FSLR is now losing its low cost advantage. The company is thus working on increasing its Cd-Te technology efficiency.<\/p>\n<p><strong>First Solar<\/strong> <a href=\"http:\/\/www.bloomberg.com\/news\/2013-08-06\/first-solar-buys-ge-s-cadmium-telluride-solar-property.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">acquired General Electric&#8217;s (GE) thin film technology<\/a> in return for\u00a01.75 million shares of FSLR stock, making GE one of its top shareholders. The agreement includes the purchase of <strong>GE&#8217;s\u00a0cadmium-telluride<\/strong> solar intellectual property. First Solar expects to be a winner by combining its manufacturing capabilities with GE&#8217;s IP.\u00a0<span style=\"font-size: 13px; line-height: 19px;\">GE was giving a tight competition to FSLR in terms of cell efficiency, with GE&#8217;s efficiency at 19.6% as compared to FSLR&#8217;s 18.7%.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><strong><em>Read more about <a href=\"http:\/\/www.greenworldinvestor.com\/2011\/07\/06\/first-solar-solar-panels-priceefficiency-competitors-review-and-how-to-buy-first-solar-module-cost-per-watt-for-households\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">First Solar&#8217;s Thin Film Solar Panels<\/a><\/em><\/strong>.<\/p>\n<p>GE has been in the power plant equipment business since a long time and has business relations with many utilities and developers. This would help FSLR market its products to the large solar farm\u00a0industry.\u00a0First Solar used to\u00a0earlier\u00a0sell its solar panels mostly to developers and utilities to build ground mounted solar panel farms.<\/p>\n<p>It remains to be seen if this GE-FSLR collaboration could enhance the panel efficiency which I doubt.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>FSLR acquires GE&#8217;s Thin Film technology First Solar is the world&#8217;s leading producers of solar panels with a solar panel technology that differs from almost all<span class=\"excerpt-hellip\"> [\u2026]<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_eb_attr":"","content-type":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[89,92,52],"tags":[847,1959,2112,4879,4956,5532],"class_list":["post-14108","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-first-solar","category-ge","category-solar-panels","tag-cadmium-tellurium","tag-first-solar","tag-ge","tag-solar-industry","tag-solar-panels","tag-thin-film"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/iiec-india.org\/greenworld\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14108","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/iiec-india.org\/greenworld\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/iiec-india.org\/greenworld\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/iiec-india.org\/greenworld\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/iiec-india.org\/greenworld\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=14108"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/iiec-india.org\/greenworld\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14108\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/iiec-india.org\/greenworld\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14108"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/iiec-india.org\/greenworld\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14108"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/iiec-india.org\/greenworld\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14108"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}