The Solar Array Manufacturing Industry Costing Standards (SAMICS) provide standard formats, data, assumptions, and procedures for determining the price a hypothetical solar array manufacturer would have to be able to obtain in the market to realize a specified after-tax rate of return on equity for a specified level of production. This document summarizes the methodology and its theoretical background. It is contended that the model is sufficiently general to be used in any production-line manufacturing environment.

The Solar Array Manufacturing Industry Costing Standards (SAMICS) provide standard formats, data, assumptions, and procedures for determining the price a hypothetical solar array manufacturer would have to be able to obtain in the market to realize a specified after-tax rate of return on equity for a specified level of production. This document presents the methodology and its theoretical background. It is contended that the model is sufficiently general to be used in any production-line manufacturing environment. Implementation of this methodology by the Solar Array Manufacturing Industry Simulation computer program (SAMIS III, Release 1) is discussed.

An environmental test chamber providing acceleration of uv radiation and precise temperature control (+- 1/sup 0/C) has been designed, constructed and tested. This chamber allows acceleration of solar ultraviolet up to 30 suns while maintaining temperature of the absorbing surface at 30/sup 0/C to 60/sup 0/C). This test chamber utilizes a filtered medium pressure mercury arc as the source of radiation, and a combination of selenium radiometer and silicon radiometer to monitor solar ultraviolet (295 to 340 nm) and total radiant power output, respectively. Details of design and construction and operational procedures are presented along with typical test data. The test chamber was designed for accelerated testing of solar cell modules.

Silane pyrolysis in a continuous flow pyrolyzer is a simple process that is currently being developed for producing solar cell grade silicon. The process involves complex phenomena, however, including thermal decomposition of silane, nucleation and growth of silicon particles, and mass and heat transfer. Modeling the effects of transport phenomena on silane pyrolysis in a continuous flow pyrolyzer is discussed. One- and two-dimensional models are developed to predict velocity, temperature, and concentration profiles in the reactor. The one-dimensional model has been implemented as a computer code.

Efforts at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory toward the production of pure polycrystaline silicon are centered on the concept of silicon particle growth in a fluidized bed reactor (FBR) and a continuous flow pyrolyzer (CFP). The CFP possibly can provide the seed particles which will be grown to larger sizes in the FBR. In both the reactors polycrystalline silicon is obtaned from the pyrolysis of silane. A part of the JPL effort is to develop a model of silicon particle growth for the purpose of predicting particle growth rates and product particle size distributions in the FBR and the CFP. This repot describes the mathematical models of silicon particle growth in the FBR and the CFP.

A computer-assisted thermochemical equilibrium analysis was conducted for the silicon transport reaction: Si(s) + SiF/sub 4/(g) = (intermediates) = Si(s) + SiF/sub 4/(g). The calculations indicated that a substantial transport rate should be possible at temperatures of 1700/sup 0/K and one atmosphere pressure. Computations were made to determine whether the elemental impurities present in metallurgical-grade silicon would transfer in this process. It was concluded that aluminum, chromium, copper, iron, manganese, molybdenum, nickel, vanadium, and zirconium would not transfer, but that boron, magnesium, phosphorus, and titanium would transfer.

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This report describes progress made by the Low-Cost Solar Array Project during the period April through August 1979. It includes reports on project analysis and integration; technology development in silicon material, large-area sheet silicon, and encapsulation; production process and equipment development; engineering and operations, and a discussion of the steps taken to integrate these efforts. It includes a report on, and copies of viewgraphs presented at the Project Integration Meeting held August 22-23, 1979.