TECSTAR APPLIED SOLAR DIVISION COMPLETES QUALIFICATION AND STARTS PRODUCTION FOR NEXT GENERATION TEC2 CASCADE® SOLAR CELL
City of Industry, CA. TECSTAR, Inc. Applied Solar Division has completed qualification on its radiation hard TEC2 Cascade® solar cell. The TEC2 structure is an evolution of TECSTAR s successful TEC1 Cascade® solar cell with production deliveries exceeding 300,000. The production TEC2 solar cell provides a minimum average 24.5% BOL efficiency with a P/Po of 0.87 for 15-year GEO applications. The new solar cell design is in production to meet several significant contractual delivery requirements in the coming months. TECSTAR will introduce the TEC2i solar cell in late summer that embodies a monolithically grown bypass diode (patent pending). This solar cell/diode design enables ease of manufacturing for solar panel integrators and further improves power per unit area for solar array integrators, giving TECSTAR customer s the best value technology solution. Qualification reports for the TEC2 solar cell are available.
TECSTAR, Inc. was founded in 1954 as the country s first supplier of silicon space solar cells. Today, the privately held company is the first to manufacture and fly triple junction Cascade® cells and panels in space. TECSTAR powered the hugely successful Mars Pathfinder mission with its solar cell assemblies and supplied the first solar cells to power a U.S. satellite, Vanguard I, in 1958. Today, TECSTAR offers optoelectronics, photovoltaic power systems, electro-mechanical and electro-magnetic assemblies, high-speed data transfer systems, and world-class controls design and development to the space and avionics industries. TECSTAR hardware has flown successfully on more than 1,000 satellites. The Company is ISO 9001 certified.
Charlene Melear Manager, Public Relations Ph: 626-934-6507 Fax: 626-336-8694 www.tecstar.com
Web site: http://www.tecstar.com
