Thin-film cells are sometimes viewed as the unloved stepchildren of the solar industry.
Low efficiencies, unattractive yields and technical manufacturing hurdles slowed the industry’s expansion. Plunging crystalline silicon prices last year made competing even tougher.
Vendors and suppliers see module costs falling to 75 cents a watt and below.
Still companies hold out ambitious hopes for the future – and for costs to reach to 75 cents a watt and below in the next couple years. Prices this low should improve thin film’s market position versus crystalline module makers, such as Suntech Power Holdings and SunPower, especially for large-scale utility deployments.
Thin-film leader First Solar sets the benchmark. The company’s cadmium-telluride modules achieved 11.1 percent efficiency in the first quarter of this year and at a cost of 81 cents a watt. The company holds a market leading 18 percent share of the solar module market.
But competitors and suppliers say they see a path beyond this leader and expect to arrive there in the not too distant future. According to John Patrin, director of business development and product marketing at equipment supplier Veeco, a module with 12.5 percent efficiency and a cost of 75 cents a watt is possible.
The biggest way to improve cost per watt is to drive up efficiency, he says.
Liyou Yang, the former head of thin-film research at BP Solar and now the chief executive of Astronergy in China, hopes to outdo this. He sees an opportunity to reduce costs to 71 cents a watt as soon as this year, aided by a jump in production volumes. Yang said at the Intersolar conference that his goal is to expand thin-film manufacturing to 75 megawatts by December, more than double last year.
Breaking the 70-cent level is “what we are driving to achieve,” he says. To accomplish that, Astronergy expects 9.7 percent efficiency by the end of the year and says 12 percent in commercial volumes is possible in 2 to 3 years. If this is becomes a reality, “we will at least put thin film on a viable path,” he says.
Such a path means enhanced competition with crystalline cells. There is a growing conviction that crystalline silicon modules will fall to $1.05 or $1.06 a watt, but no further. Modules need to fall to $1 a watt to compete head-to-head with electricity from coal without government subsidies.
Clearly, though, the industry has a lot of convincing to do. Venture investing in thin-film start-ups dropped sharply in 2009 and 2010, and decision makers appear hesitant to reverse the trend.
In a Perspectives piece published just last month on Greentech Media, clean-tech investor Vinod Khosla offered a downbeat opinion of the industry. “Most current thin-film start-up efforts do not appear differentiated enough to justify the hundreds of millions invested in them,” he said.
The challenge for entrepreneurs will be to prove him wrong.
Posted by Mark Boslet 
