The UK’s first factory for manufacturing flexible solar modules has opened for business.
Power Roll’s solar film manufacturing facility, in County Durham, is located on a former colliery site.
The pilot manufacturing facility will produce thin, flexible and lightweight solar modules that can be deployed in the built environment, off-grid, on vehicles and other applications where traditional silicon solar panels are too heavy or too expensive to be used.
Estimates suggest that current UK commercial roof space alone could accommodate almost 100GW of solar film, equivalent to building 20,000 5MW solar farms, said Power Roll.
UK energy Minister Greg Hands said: “Power Roll embodies the North East’s spirit of enterprise – a company making cutting-edge green technology right here in the UK; powering growth and creating quality jobs in our industrial heartlands.”
Neil Spann (pictured, right), chief executive of Power Roll, added: “Our mission is to dramatically increase the uptake of solar power, worldwide, and our new pilot manufacturing facility is a huge step towards delivering our vision.
“Developed in the UK, our unique micro-groove design enables a manufacturing process that uses a roll-to-roll technique similar to many low-cost print processes in use today.
“We will fully demonstrate our technology at our Durham facility and will partner with large companies in the UK and overseas to globally scale up the solar film manufacturing.
“Countries around the world will be able to establish local manufacturing facilities to produce solar film for deployment in their own cities, towns and remote communities, creating thousands of green jobs.”