physics

Siva Power

Siva Power is a physics topic covered in the lgStudy science library. This page brings together a partial reference excerpt, illustrations, worked examples, real-world applications and a short study plan, so you can understand Siva Power rather than just read about it. In short: Siva Power, Inc. was an American solar power company that developed thin-film technology. The company designed and manufactured copper indium gallium deselenide (CIGS) photovoltaics.

Key takeaways

Siva Power belongs to physics; place it in that map before memorising details.
Learn the definition first, then one example that makes the definition concrete.
Connect Siva Power to a quantity you can measure, compute or draw — that is where exam questions come from.
Reproduce the core statement of Siva Power from memory before moving on to harder problems.

Reference excerpt

Siva Power, Inc. was an American solar power company that developed thin-film technology. The company designed and manufactured copper indium gallium deselenide (CIGS) photovoltaics. Siva Power was based in San Jose, California. Bruce Sohn was CEO and Mark Heising was chairman.

History The company was founded in 2006 as Solexant (one of the founders was Paul Alivisatos) and was developing cadmium telluride (CdTe) technology to create solar panels. After the Chinese began dumping silicon solar panels and the American thin-film market worsened, the company decided to pivot and in 2011 hired Brad Mattson to take Solexant in a new direction, which he restarted in 2012. Mattson put the company into stealth mode and ramped up the R&D budget to find a different technology and process for manufacturing solar modules. In 2013 the company reemerged as Siva Power, developing CIGS photovoltaic technology. As of June 24, 2022 the website is no longer active, and is shown as expiring on August 21, 2021. An article in PV Magazine includes Siva Power as having failed in October 2019.

Technology Siva Power's deposition technique is Rapid Thermal co-evaporation, which deposits the CIGS compound alloy film by direct reactive condensation of vapors of its constituent elements (copper, indium, gallium, and selenium) onto the substrate, for which Siva Power uses glass. Siva Power has said its initial production capacity of a single line would be 400 megawatts of modules per annum, whereas typical pilot production lines tend to be 5 to 30 megawatts.

Department of Energy SunShot Initiative award In 2014, Siva Power won the US Department of Energy SunShot Initiative award under the SunShot SolarMat2 category for driving down the cost of manufacturing and implementing efficiency-increasing technology in manufacturing processes for solar modules. The manufacturing component Siva Power plans to build through the SunShot award are designed to have a 12x higher areal (e.g.: m2/min) manufacturing throughput than other CIGS deposition tools, enabling a fully automated CIGS deposition system at a 3x reduction in capex, labor, and overhead cost.

Funding and acquisitions When the company was Solexant and developing CdTe technology, it had raised $60M over 3 rounds of venture funding from X Seed Capital, Acero Capital (formerly Olympus Capital), Medley Partners, Birchmere Ventures, Trident Capital, Firelake Capital, and DBL Investors. In 2011, Solexant acquired Wakonda, a solar startup based in New York. The company was recapitalized with $7M in 2015 in series D preferred equity investments from DBL, Medley, Acero and the city of Wuxi, China. In 2016, the company added $5M more to the series D investment. A $25M Series E round, led by Renaissance Technologies hedge fund manager Jim Simons, was closed in May 2017 for the purpose of funding a pilot line.

References

Worked examples

Example 1 — a first encounter with Siva Power

Start with the simplest possible case. Write down what Siva Power claims or describes in one sentence, then invent the smallest concrete situation in which that sentence is true. In physics, the smallest case is usually a single object, a single equation or a single measurement. Check that every symbol or term in your sentence has a meaning in that case.

Example 2 — changing one variable

Take the situation from Example 1 and change exactly one quantity: double it, halve it, or set it to zero. Predict what should happen to Siva Power before you calculate. Comparing your prediction with the result is the fastest way to find out whether you understand the idea or only the words.

Example 3 — an exam-style question

Typical questions about Siva Power ask you to (a) state it precisely, (b) apply it to given data, and (c) explain a limitation. Practise writing all three answers in under five minutes; the third part is what separates a full-mark answer from an average one.

Applications of Siva Power

In research: Siva Power appears in physics research whenever the underlying quantities have to be modelled precisely. Papers usually cite it as a starting assumption and then explore where it breaks down.
In technology and industry: Engineering practice reuses Siva Power in design rules, simulations and safety margins. Knowing the idea lets you read a specification sheet and understand why the numbers look the way they do.
In the classroom: Siva Power is common in secondary-school and first-year university syllabi. It links to neighbouring topics Energy companies of the United States, Sustainable energy, so understanding it makes those chapters shorter.
In everyday life: Look for Siva Power outside the textbook — in sport, cooking, traffic, electronics or the sky above you. An example you found yourself is remembered far longer than one you were given.

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How to study Siva Power in 20 minutes

Read the reference excerpt below once, without taking notes.
Close the page and write down what Siva Power means in your own words.
Compare your version with the excerpt and mark what you missed.
Work through the three examples above with pen and paper.
Explain Siva Power out loud to somebody else — or to Teacher Smith in the lgStudy chat.

Frequently asked questions

What is Siva Power in simple terms?

Siva Power, Inc. was an American solar power company that developed thin-film technology. The company designed and manufactured copper indium gallium deselenide (CIGS) photovoltaics.

Why does Siva Power matter?

Because it connects several physics ideas at once: it gives you a definition you can apply, a quantity you can calculate, and a way to check whether a result is plausible.

How should I study Siva Power?

Read the excerpt, restate it from memory, then work through the examples and applications listed on this page. The five-step study plan above takes about twenty minutes.

What does this page cover?

It gives you a compact reference excerpt plus original lgStudy explanations, examples, applications and study material on Siva Power.