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Seven candidates for the title of »Second Solar« at PHOTON’s Thin-film Conference
December, 2008: Lower costs are the single most important factor in ensuring a thin-film manufacturer’s success – at least that was the unanimous opinion of experts at PHOTON’s first Thin-film Conference in San Francisco on December 3.
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© photon-pictures.com
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Searching for the »Second Solar«: seven companies presented their wares at PHOTON’s thin-film conference.
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This was the second in a series of three conferences held under the rubric “Searching for the Second Solar,” which attracted around 300 participants to the Hotel Intercontinental. The event’s goal was to discover which thin-film manufacturer would follow in the footsteps of US company First Solar Inc., which has become the leading, most cost-effective module producer over the last three years.
PHOTON Consulting, Solar Verlag’s consulting unit, counts a total of 192 thin-film companies. But only one quarter of them will survive, suggests analyst Ryan Boas -- namely those companies that have already secured future investments and will be able to drop down their costs as quickly as necessary. Furthermore, in the opinion of several other conference speakers from the industry and finance sectors, the single most important factor guaranteeing success for a thin-film company is the ability to manufacture products at a price significantly lower than that of crystalline competitors. Lars Podlowski, CTO of German crystalline module manufacturer Solon AG, is convinced that modules with efficiencies lower than 10 percent will not be able to compete over the long run.
Seven candidates for the title of “Second Solar” discussed their recipes for success at the conference. Q-Cells presented as many as five companies in which it holds a stake: Solibro GmbH, Sontor GmbH, Calyxo GmbH, CSG Solar AG, and VHF-Technologies SA (Flexcell). Q-Cells is pursuing a different thin-film technology through each of these companies, and therefore is covering the spectrum of materials used in thin-film production: it’s working with silicon, copper indium gallium diselenide (CIGS), and cadmium telluride. Calyxo’s manager Michael Bauer wasn’t able to predict which of the five companies would have the best chances for success: “Maybe in a year,” he added.
Like Calyxo, AVA Solar Inc. is also working with cadmium telluride modules, which the company wants to be able to produce for less than $1 per W. Delivery of the first modules from the company’s factory in Colorado, USA is scheduled to begin in March or April of 2009.
Producing modules for less than EUR1 per W is also the goal of Inventux GmbH, which was founded in Berlin a year ago. In just 8 months, the company built its first factory, which is now beginning mass production of micromorphous modules. But the company that has the most experience with these types of modules is Japan’s Kaneka Corp. Although Kaneka’s production volume has been rather humble until now, the company is investing in a capacity expansion to 150 MW.
The world’s highest efficiency for a thin-film module based on silicon was achieved by United Solar Ovonic, LLC: the company’s new generation of flexible, three-layer stacked cells have a starting efficiency of 15.4 percent, although these modules are still under development. By 2012, United Solar would like to produce thin-films at $1.10 Dollar per W, and expand production capacity to 1 GW.
Nanosolar is also wagering on flexible solar cells produced with a roll-to-roll process. In this case, CIGS particles are injected into a substrate as ink. Manager Martin Roscheisen announced that his solar cells have achieved efficiencies of 14.5 percent, although the product isn’t on the market yet. Roscheisen is still aiming to expand production capacity to 1 GW, a goal that he announced two years ago.
Solyndra, Inc. also works with CIGS. This company’s modules are made of glass tubes that are parallel connected, and therefore look very different than any of the other products presented at the conference.
It remains to be seen whether these companies will achieve their objectives. But all of them have at least cleared one hurdle: when asked, the speakers all confirmed that their companies have been able to secure future investments.
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