Production, Cost and Market
In recent years, the manufacturers of thin-film solar modules have brought costs down and gained competitive strength through advanced thin film technology. However, the traditional crystalline silicon technologies will not give up their market positions for a few years because they still hold considerable development potential in terms of the cost. Efficiency of thin film solar is considerably lower and thin film solar manufacturing equipment suppliers intend to score costs of below USD 1/W, and Anwell Technologies Limited claimed that they intend to bring it down further to USD 0.5/W. Those equipment suppliers have been doing R&D for micro-morphous silicon modules since 2008. This technology represents a development based on the thin-film panels made of ordinary amorphous silicon marketed at present that brings higher cell efficiency by depositing an additional absorber layer made of micro crystalline silicon on the amorphous layer. Some equipment suppliers even claim that there will be machinery in market to manufacture these new modules at $0.70. With such potential of further development of thin film solar technology, the European Photovoltaic Industry Association (EPIA) expects that manufacturing capacities for these technologies will double to over 4GW by 2010 representing a market share of around 20%. In 2011, GE announced plans to spend $600 million on a new CdTe solar cell plant and enter this market.
Potential thin film manufacturers faced severe price competition from Chinese refiners of silicon and manufacturers of conventional solar panels. As of January, 2013 one of the consequences was that some firms developing thin film technology together with their patents have been sold to Chinese firms below cost.
Read more about this topic: Thin Film Solar Cell
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