Ascent Solar Technologies, Inc. (NASDAQ: ASTI) and its "Ascent Solar alliance" - an Ascent-led consortium - plan to shake up the economics of solar energy generation by introducing a new series of products for commercial and residential building markets.

Using Ascent's thin film photovoltaic (PV) technology on plastics, large photovoltaic modules in roll format will be integrated with various construction materials to produce multiple Building Integrated PV (BIPV) products for commercial and residential applications.

Ascent Solar expects that PV system integration will be reduced from weeks to days for systems as large as 600kW and that, based upon U.S. Department of Energy cost models, the cost to produce electricity will be reduced from 20¢/kWhr to 5¢/kWhr.

Led by Ascent Solar, the alliance developing the new BIPV products and associated manufacturing processes consists of companies, academia, and government laboratories, including Permacity Solar, the Institute of Energy Conversion (University of Delaware), Colorado School of Mines, University of Texas, ITN Energy Systems, Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (U.S. Department of Energy) and IBIS Associates.

As the cost of solar generated electricity approaches that of fossil fuel generated power, BIPV growth could expand exponentially. "The potential for this happening is as early as 2010," said Ascent Solar President and CEO Matthew Foster. "Our vision is to see the day when BIPV will become pervasive as a building and construction material much like plywood is today and become affordable for all in need of low cost electricity from a natural resource that is free, abundant, and available to everyone."

The key to realizing the day when low cost PV systems produce electricity more cost effectively than fossil fuels is low cost manufacturing of modules and system components. Ascent plans to use manufacturing techniques similar to the semiconductor industry by scaling manufacturing equipment and processes to run faster and wider. Integration of cells into modules during manufacturing should completely eliminate the entire back-end assembly operation of today, says the company.

Ascent thinks that the new BIPV roll formats can offer reductions in the number of discrete modules by as much as 90% for a typical PV system deployment, and provide flexibility to cover up to 35% more area. The company thinks the multiplying effect on cost should be considerable.

Ascent is developing a 1.5MW production line for terrestrial, space and near-space applications. This production capacity will produce prototypes of the new products and demonstrate the large area manufacturing process. The wide web manufacturing processes are expected to become the production baseline for future manufacturing scale up to 100MW capacities, currently envisioned to begin by 2010.

To accelerate these new product and manufacturing innovations, Ascent submitted a proposal to the U.S. Department of Energy yesterday, hoping to be one of the department's 15-20 lucky recipients of a "Solar America Initiative" award by year end.

At press time, Ascent was trading at $2.49 USD, up almost 5% from yesterday's close, but still a long way from its summer IPO glory of $5.50 USD.