Is Solar Production Accomplished Through Clean Energy?

Yes. The United States solar industry is the world leader of high-quality and sustainably produced solar panels for residential use. Our country's goal of relying entirely on renewable energy by 2035 has increased demand for panels produced domestically because of their higher quality and longer life span.

This goal also requires that solar panel production itself be done via renewable energy, which is precisely what REC Silicon's Moses Lake, Washington, polysilicon plant accomplishes through the use of hydroelectric power. 

The Grand Coulee Dam ↑ on the Columbia River is part of the Columbia Basin Project, which generates over twenty Terawatt hours of power to millions of people across the Pacific Northwest each year. 

The Moses Lake plant uses this clean energy to refine silicon into wafers. Here, REC Silicon produces silicon purified to semiconductor grade, which is essential for creating efficient solar cells.

First, raw silicon is converted into trichlorosilane, a liquid form that's distilled to strip away impurities, leaving behind a substance of incredible purity. This is then subjected to the Siemens process, where trichlorosilane vapor is heated, allowing pure silicon to crystallize onto rods, achieving purities of 99.9999% or more—parts per billion. This level of purity is used in the production of both polycrystalline solar cells and monocrystalline solar cells.

This purest of silicon is melted again in the Czochralski process. This step is necessary in the production of the monocrystalline cells produced by Qcells. Here, a seed crystal dips into the molten silicon, slowly pulling up to form a single crystal ingot. These ingots are then sliced into thin wafers with diamond wire saws. Precision is of paramount importance. This process allows the silicon wafer to exist as a sheet of crystal, without grains or seams in the atomic lattice. This allows more electrons to flow through the cell, making it more efficient.

The cut wafers are polished to a mirror finish, ready for production by an American solar cell manufacturer, where further refinement will occur.

How Are Solar Panels Built?

In Dalton and Cartersville, Georgia ↑ the wafers produced by REC Silicon are manufactured into high-quality, American-made solar panels by the company Qcells. Each component of the solar panel represents thousands of American jobs created by the domestic solar industry.

Production of the first component, cells, involves three steps—

Doping is when wafers are treated with chemicals like phosphorus and boron to create a positive and negative layer, essential for the photovoltaic effect.

Texturing is a means of applying surface features to the cells that allows them to absorb more light at more angles. Many of these textures are individually patented by Qcells.

Metal contacts are applied to the front and back of the cell to collect the current. It looks a lot like the back of a floor speaker, but a few hundred thousand times more durable.

The next component is the module. This is a good place to use high quality materials.

Individual cells are interconnected with metal ribbons to form strings, which are then laid out in a panel configuration. Qcells offers residential panels that utilize black strings, which not only look better, but also add to the panels' light absorption abilities.

These strings are then encapsulated between layers of protective materials like EVA (ethylene-vinyl acetate) to protect the cells from moisture and physical damage.

The entire assembly is then laminated under heat and pressure to seal the cells between the protective layers.

Qcells panels are then finished with a black anodized aluminium frame, which can stand up to Southern, Midwestern, and Florida states' weather conditions without warping or weakening. A junction box supplies the final component, to which your installer, Windmar, will connect a Tesla Inverter during installation.

More American workers give inspections, rigorous tests and precise quality control to the process, readying the finished panels for their half-century long future providing power to your home.