Abstract
DESCRIPTION
STRATEGIE TO REDUCE THE PRODUCTION COST
Making photovoltaics a low-cost source of clean and renewable energy is the
main goal for most of developed countries. Many of them have agreed on a 20%
renewable energy target by 2020, and some already started to implement
aggressive feed-in-tariffs to finance this objective. But the question is how
do we get there from what has been achieved so far? What would happen if
governments partially stop financing the PV industry through incentive program
cuts as in Germany for instance? Can today' s technologies be competitive
without the incentives or do we need technical evolutions, or even technical
breakthroughs to get there?
INTRODUCTION
There is no doubt that the government incentive programs helped industrials to
achieve, step by step, drastic cost reduction and performance improvements in
a very short period of time but without real revolutions. The PV industry has
also seen the emergence of largescale production facilities, international R&D
centres, and innovative equipment makers thus resulting in the impressive cost
reduction we know. But if large production facilities can play the scale
effect card to lower the cost of raw material and increase their yield, many
other levers exist in order to reduce the production cost.
In this PV Technology roadmap report, we describe all the different aspects
linked to production cost reduction: from cell structure innovations to
modification of manufacturing processes. We in fact describe all the existing
technologies: From those developed by the University of New South Wales (UNS
W), to the metal wrap through (MWT) concept developed by the ECN and
industrialized with Solland, to the new emitter wrap through (EWT) technology
being developed by Bosh Solar.
Conventional crystalline silicon cells could bump up against their theoretical
maximum efficiency of 29% as soon as 2020. Sanyo Electric Co. Ltd., for
instance, demonstrated ~23% efficiency with a 10cm2 R&D unit of its
heterojunction with intrinsic thin layer (HIT ) cells last year.
It figures that thinner surface contacts, better transparent conductors, and
lower defect density can improve performance by several more percentage
points, to likely get commercial efficiency up to about as close as practical
to the theoretical limit within about ten years.
COMPANY INDEX
Abound Solar, Advent Solar, AMAT, Antec Solar, Arendi, Auria Solar, Bosh
Solar, Canon Anelva, Centrotherm, Day 4 Energy, ECN, Energo Solar, EPV, E-Ton,
Evergreen Solar, First Solar, Flexcell, Fraunhofer, Georgia Tech, GET,
Heliosphera, IMEC, Innovalight, Intevac, Inventux, Kalixo, Kaneka, Kyocera,
Mitsubishi, Nanogram, Nedo, NREL, Oerlikon, Optomec, Philips Miplaza,
Photovoltech, Rena, Rofin, Roth and Rau, Sandia National Lab, Schmalz, Schmid,
Schott, Semitool, Sharp, SiGen, Solland, Solyndra, Sunfilm, SunPower, SunTech
Power, Synova, Toyo Advanced Technologies, Ulvac, UniSolar, University of
Konstanz, UNSW, Veeco, Von Ardenne, Xjet.......
BENEFITS:
KEY FEATURES OF THE STUDY
The objectives of this report are:
- To provide market trends on module price, installations breakdown by
technology, production capacity utilization
- To provide key technical insights about future technology trends and
Challenges
- To provide a deep understanding of new improvements that will occur with
the current C-Si cell design: emitter profile optimization, fine line
metallization, front and rear surface passivation layer optimization and a
better surface structuring.
WHO SHOULD BUY
- Marketing executives will find key figures and concepts for their
strategic plan and product offer.
- Technical managers and directors will find a complete description on the
PV manufacturing processes evolution in order to find new business
opportunities either in the wafer-based or thin-film markets. who should buy
Table of Contents
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
PV OFFER: MARKET DESCRIPTION AND FORECAST
- Description of the technologies - Family of materials
- Efficiency / Development status by technology - 2008-2010 situation
- Efficiency / Production cost- Early 2010 situation
- Fab capacity utilization by technology
- Breakdown by technology
- Overview of efficiency potentials
PV DEMAND EVOLUTION
- Mid-term forecasts up to 2013
CONCLUSIONS
- Wafer-based technology:
- Requirements for higher efficiencies
- Cell structure evolution
- Emitter profile optimization
- Passivation
- Passivated cells development Roadmap
- Identified Players
- Manufacturing Technology Cluster Roadmap
- Thin-Film technologies - Cell structure
- Equipment providers and proprietary technology based manufacturers
- Identified player
PV TECHNOLOGY ROADMAP: STRATEGIES TO REDUCE PRODUCTION COST
- Moore' s Law?
- Price reduction - impact of raw material
- Cost per Watt ratio
- Major levers
- Cost breakdown
DEVELOPMENT TRENDS ON C-SI CELLS
- Introduction
- Standard cell
- Passivated emitter cell
- Metal wrap through cell
- Emitter Wrap through cell
- Heterojunction with intrinsic thin layer cell
- Interdigitated back-junction cell
- Advanced Cell Concept Production
- Examples with Solland, Bosh or Stiebel
- New Manufacturing Steps
- Metallization
- Dopant Diffusion
- Silicon Structuring
- New Manufacturing Technologies
DEVELOPMENT TRENDS IN THIN FILM SOLAR CELLS
- Breakdown by technology
- Amorphous Silicon (a-Si)
- Tandem (a-Si/μ-Si)
- Cadmium-telluride (CdTe)
- Copper indium gallium (di)selenide (CIGS )
- New manufacturing technologies
- Transparent Interlayer
- Electrodes structuring
- Example of Nano-imprint lithography
SPECIFIC PROCESSES/POTENTIAL GAME CHANGERS
