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Solar Power 2007 wrap-up: "A tremendously competitive and dynamic environment" |
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Oct 04, 2007 at 11:53 AM |
From the first time I saw it listed in the advance agenda, I looked forward to the Advanced Cell Technology panel at Solar Power 2007.
I was not disappointed. Moderated by Paula Mints of Navigant Consulting, the event paired two outspoken voices from the entrenched crystalline-silicon side---SunPower's Dick Swanson and SolarWorld's Boris Klebensberger---with two true believers from the upstart thin-film sector---Uni-Solar's Subhendu Guha and Harin Ullal from NREL's National Center for Photovoltaics. The panelists made short presentations, then entertained questions from Paula and members of the audience. The discussion was lively, informative, and, at times, provocative. Here are a few semirandom excerpts.
Swanson---"The big takeaway from this panel will be that there are very diverse technologies vying for this, that it's gonna make for a tremendously competitive and dynamic environment in the PV industry. It leads me to believe very strongly that as an industry, we will meet our cost goals and we will achieve utility grid-connected price parity in the 2012 time frame."
Guha---"Each of the top players must produce more than 1 GW per year in 2020; the question is, who will be those players, which technologies will survive? But the winners will be those technologies that offer systems at the lowest costs per kilowatt-hours. The customer does not understand efficiency. The customer understands, 'How much money am I paying for the system and how much electricity am I getting?'"
Ullal--"Why thin films? You need less materials; fewer processing steps; the process lends itself to automation; we can have monolithic integration; we can have flexible, rigid, transparent [substrates]; the modules are independent of the shortage of silicon; effective energy output, kilowatt-hour per kilowatt installed; better performance at low-light levels; and definite cost-reduction potential." He also showed the US thin-film market-share numbers. "In 2003, we were less than 10%. This has gradually increased, last year it was around 44 1/2%, and this year our estimate is that we will surpass silicon and be around 55%, the major contributors being First Solar and Uni-Solar."
Klebensberger--"My outlook for thin films is that I'm not against them, but in the PV world, thin film has always been the future, but it never came to land---it's still flying somewhere. So my statement always is, today is the day for thin films: they either make it or they won't make it. There has never been such a good chance for thin film as today. An enormous amount, hundreds of new factories will be established for thin films worldwide in the next few years. It's hard for me to imagine that they will all fail."
"...I don't believe that thin film is more cost effective. The most expensive material you have is the one in the warehouse. In the thin-film factory you have to imagine, OK, you push the button, it works, and it has to run all day long because that's how they're gonna be designed. If you're not running it all day long, and you don't have the yield and the uptime and it's not really running 24 hours, 7 days, you will never meet the costs. That's part of the game. And if they start it, they have to do it, and then they have to sell it. The material will come, before you die, it's not because of cost, it's because of cash drain, and they have to sell it."
Guha---"When you see so many people coming and setting up factories, people many times underestimate the effort that is needed to take a small-area, champion-lab efficiency into a large module efficiency. You have to pay your dues. This does not come easily. I think many of the players, some of the players, will have enough cash to take where they are today to go to where they would like to be, but many of them will not survive. Because they need a lot of capital to be viable."
Swanson---"Our manufacturing skills have improved over time as we make more and more of these high-efficiency solar cells. We've taken our new second-generation cells, made them into a module, and had the module tested at Sandia National Labs, and the module efficiency of these roughly 23% cells is over 20%. I think this is the first commercial-size module that has been able to crest 20%. It certainly shows the potential, shows the future, and one day the field will be populated with 20% conversion devices."
Acting as devil's advocate, Paula asked: "I hear that PV modules require more energy to manufacture than they produce during their 20-yr lifetime. Is that true?"
"This is a pet peeve of mine," replied Swanson. "We see this in the popular press time and time again. I think there was a time when that was true, there was a Scientific American article in the early '70s that said that and people are still quoting that today. We've made progress in the last 30 years, and it's no longer true. The latest study from the Copernicus Institute has [the figure] for generic standard c-Si modules down to 1.7 years, so let's dispel this once and for all."
For one last blast of news from Solar Power 2007, may I suggest you check out my story from the show floor, which posted on www.smalltimes.com earlier today. Here's the link.
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