A few weeks ago, I blogged about ATS Automation’s challenges in bringing “disruptive” technology to the solar arena. The one they are trying to productionize is a spheral solar technology which was originally created by Texas Instruments in the 1980’s.
This week another announcement in the technology disruption arena promises to be far greater in scope and disruption to the solar industry as we know it. Nanosolar announced the financing for a 430Megawatt facility with US$100million. There are several things which make this annoucement extremely critical for the solar industry.
First, an investment of only $0.25 per watt produced is far below the current industry investments required to produce that much solar capacity. This means that the capitalization figure included in any costing is far less.
Second, they use a CIGS process. This has been known to be stable under extreme conditions.
Third, the cost per watt will be significantly below the crystalline players because of the roll-to-roll printing process utilized.
Fourth, we’re not talking about a 20MW disruption (which is basically none at all) to the industry. We’re looking at nearly half a gigawatt of new capacity. That is more than the entire industry produced just a few short years ago!
So it looks like someone is about to cause a major shift in how the industry is developing. Now what happens when you have giants like Kyocera, Solarworld, Sharp, Sanyo, BP etc.. in an industry with hundreds of millions of dollars invested in their own processes and are now challenged by a newcomer like this? Two things: crush them or buy them. Option B only occurs if Option A is not possible.
The lay of the land is about to get interesting for smaller players who will have to be eaten up or move aside. The stakes in the game has just been moved up a notch…
Sass