Interest in the solar market is on the rise. But the industry is finding it difficult to know which solar technology will win in the long run: thin film or polysilicon.
Two days ago, manufacturing powerhouse GE placed a big bet on the business, promising to develop a line of low-cost cadmium telluride thin-film cells to rival those of solar leader First Solar.
Polysilicon has the efficiency title but GE wouldn't have chosen thin film without a good reason
Late Thursday, polysilicon maker SunPower fired back. It boasted of record efficiencies in its cells: 20 percent in the market now and 24 percent under development.
The arms race is off to a full sprint. The trade off is greater efficiency versus lower price. As long as polysilicon, or crystalline, cells keeps making efficiency gains, the price advantage of thin film can be kept at bay. But as the price of thin film falls, the pressures rise for crystalline efficiency gains.
SunPower CEO Tom Werner says he sees an increasingly competitive market. But he says he has no increase in shifting to thin film. There are several good reasons. For one, fewer polysilicon cells are required on a rooftop to generate the same amount of power.
SunPower is pushing hard on efficiency. Werner says the first 24-percent cells were made in the fourth quarter, besting the 20 percent efficient cells in production now. The company also has the key $1 a watt manufacturing target in its sights for 2014. Today’s cost is just under $2.
SunPower may have a technology lead over Chinese makers. But they, too, are pushing the efficiency dial. Suntech now produces at 19 percent with improvements under developmet. JA solar in February said 18.7 percent efficiency was in its labs.
Thin-film companies aren’t running scared. The race is on in earnest to produce the least expensive, most efficient cell, says GE. With that in mind and “after having completed an exhaustive survey of the PV landscape, we determined that thin films were the optimum path,” says GE’s Danielle Marfeld.
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