HelioVolt and Exeltech are collaborating to provide turnkey systems for solar energy generation. The collaboration will draw on HelioVolt’s FASST technology for rapid CIGS thin-film production and Exeltech’s core competencies in high performance AC power system design and manufacture.

Some of the products will be solar panels that can be integrated into the conventional solar panel frames, while others will be construction materials that have energy-generating technology built in-roof tiles with integrated solar cells, for example, CNET reports.

The goal is to reduce the cost of the inverter and the install.

HelioVolt specializes in CIGS solar cells which, according to CNET, are not as efficient as silicon for converting sunlight to electricity, but the solar cells and panels that use it are expected to cost less. But no one mass-produces CIGS yet. HelioVolt won’t mass- produce CIGS cells until 2008.

Time Magazine named HelioVolt’s FASST technology one of the best inventions of 2006.

Development and manufacture of the planned solar energy systems will take place at company headquarters in both Austin and Fort Worth.