There is a lot of talk in the industry about the new up and coming thin film players, yet it’s interesting to see that the backbone of the technologies are pretty constant with what was available in the 1980’s.
Either CIS or amorphous silicon are the base technologies. There is of course CdTe, yet people are really shy to get into that given the environmental concerns. (While its true that the amounts per solar module are minute, call it a perception thing!).
At the moment, it seems that there is greater interest in production processes which bring down the cost of CIS, a stable thin film recipe. Whereas the cost of deposition of amorphous silicon is a fraction of most CIS processes, some people are beginning to make noises that they feel they can compete on a cost basis per square foot, not just per watt. Obviously with its stability, CIS would be a winner in this case.
Some makers of amorphous silicon are beginning to experiment with micromorph (introducing the stability of thick film crystalline into a thinfilm production process) yet that is still not in the production rollout phase which some had predicted years ago. For some reason, no major breakthrough in capacity have been announced anywhere.
So it is just a matter of time before a few of these horses (expect some of them to simply not make it due to lack of depth of management and/or poor technology when compared) come into the public domain and change the paradigms. A couple of entrants are scheduled to begin deliveries in March so this is when we’ll see the reaction of the thick film industry, in combination with supposed increases in capacity coming online. And as new ones come in, my little spy tells me that a couple of older thin film makers are about to close shop, due to the simple fact that their cell structure is too costly to make or their manufacturing process is simply not robust enough…
I just don’t know. California is about to mimic the giant sucking sound that Germany has been towards any solar capacity for years…and I believe the market will continue to grow exponentially with the cost of oil at $66 per barrel. All I can say is that I am glad that ICP underwent the metamorphous process of focusing itself. Solar is definitely the sunny future for those who carve out the right path..
Sass Peress
PS> Sure enough the markets proved me wrong with publicly listed solar companies jumping near 10% in just a week. Luckily, I didn’t divest just yet :)….