The World Leader in Solar Cell Technology
Spectrolab Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of the Boeing Company, is the world's largest manufacturer of space solar cells and a leader in solar cell innovation and has been supplying solar array panels to the space industry for 50 years. The company's products also range from compound semiconductors and high intensity lighting products searchlight systems (Nightsun® series), solar simulators and optoelectronic products. Spectrolab's 2 millionth multi-junction solar cells was built in 2006 as the company celebrated its 50th Anniversary. Spectrolab is headquartered in Sylmar, California, and has an employee population of approximately 375.
Spectrolab has the capacity to build space qualified Ultra Triple-Junction solar cells that can generate approximately 600 kilowatts per year of electrical power which is equivalent to approximately 50 Boeing 702 satellites per year. These solar cells have a minimum average efficiency of 28.3 percent (at air-mass zero and 28°C).
Space Solar Power
Spectrolab has the capacity to build space qualified Ultra Triple-Junction solar cells that can generate approximately 600 kilowatts per year of spacecraft electrical power, which is equivalent to approximately 50 Boeing 702 satellites per year. Recent Boeing satellites launched with Spectrolab cells include, Spaceway F1, XM-3, MEASAT-3 and New Skies -8. Spectrolab's solar cells currently power 60 percent of the satellites in Earth orbit. In addition, all of the solar panels operating on recent Mars missions were built by Spectrolab. The company provided the solar cells for NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter as well the Mars exploration vehicles Spirit and Opportunity. The two rovers operated well beyond their 90-day planned mission life conducting research operations on the red planet.
The foundation of Spectrolab's success lies in its ability to rapidly transfer cutting-edge technology from a laboratory setting to a manufacturing process. As the demand for more powerful, efficient and more capable satellites increased in the 1970s and 1980s, Spectrolab continued to lead the industry with increasingly more powerful solar cells. With each successive innovation the company increased the efficiency from the 12 percent conversion rate of a silicon solar cell to a maximum efficiency of 28.3 percent using state-of-the-art gallium arsenide on germanium wafers to produce multi-junction solar cells. By 2009, the company plans to offer space solar cells with efficiencies as high as 33 percent.
Spectrolab has invested extensively in high-technology machinery to achieve its high production rate. In 1993, the company installed the world's largest advanced MOVPE (Metal Organic Vapor Phase Epitaxy) reactor as part of a high-capacity gallium arsenide solar cell production line. Through the addition of these and other manufacturing process enhancements, the company continues to increase its production capacity and capture even more of the world's solar cell market. Spectrolab recognized an industry need for the capability to test solar cells in the vacuum of space early in the development of the technology. In 1962, the company designed and began manufacturing both steady-state and pulsed simulators, which have since become an industry standard.
Terrestial Solar
Spectrolab's Earth-based concentrator cells currently hold the world's record for efficiency,40.7 percent under concentrated sunlight. Spectrolab is working with a number of international and domestic solar concentrator manufacturers on clean, renewable solar energy solutions. The total terrestrial concentrator cell capacity at Spectrolab has a rated output of more than 200 megawatts (at 500 sun concentration) per year. Mirrors or lenses are used to concentrate the solar rays onto a cell to increase power output. Spectrolab signed a multi-million dollar contract to supply concentrator photovoltaic (CPV) cell assemblies to
Solar Systems Pty. Ltd. of Hawthorn, Victoria an Australian renewable solar energy company. Under the contract, Boeing will deliver 500,000 concentrator solar cell assemblies for use at power stations that generate renewable energy for small, remote communities. Spectrolab has also signed a contract to provide 600,000 solar concentrator cells to SolFocus a California-based renewable energy company. Spectrolab's solar cells currently deliver power into the grid in a 1-kilowatt solar concentrator test system in the Arizona Public Service (APS) Solar Test and Research Facility (STAR) located in Tempe AZ, which has been functioning optimally for more than two years.
Nightsun®
In addition to space PV solar cells and panels, customers around the world rely on Spectrolab's Nightsun® series searchlights to help pilots navigate at night. Nearly all the searchlights used on law enforcement aircraft both nationally and internationally come from Spectrolab. In the United States, the U.S. Air Force has ordered searchlights for use on several of its helicopters, and the U.S. Border Patrol also relies on searchlights designed and built by Spectrolab. Kazan Helicopters of Russia and the Royal Netherlands Police use Spectrolab searchlights. The British Ministry of Defense uses the Nightsun® product exclusively.
History
Founded in 1956, Spectrolab's origins can be traced to a group of engineers who began providing high-quality optical filters and mirrors to the government. Spectrolab established its credibility in the space industry in 1958 with Pioneer 1, which carried the company's first body-mounted solar panels. With the historic Apollo 11 mission in 1969, a Spectrolab solar panel became the first one on the moon. Since then, Spectrolab solar cells and panels have powered more than 500 satellites and interplanetary missions.