Amazing how a few days can make some people warm up to my view that thin film WILL be 17% of the market by 2010. Enter a complete unknown into the solar industry with this announcement of a 160MW thinfilm amorphous plant.
They’ve done it with the right partner in my opinion. Although the piece states that Oerlikon is the “only” supplier of complete systems, there is in fact another. Its an american company called EPV. EPV uses a small footprint of 5MW building blocks (at the moment) and believes in a strategy of putting down smaller factories near the location of the market whereas Oerlikon believes that with such massive buying power, you can negate the advantage of such localized manufacturing of small batches. Both sell systems for about $1 per watt in capex investment so this is where it gets interesting.
The competition in thinfilm just got much much much hotter and it shows that a prediction of a TON of supply coming onto the market in the next 24 months is absolutely true. It also validates the strategic plan which we have put forth to our Board on Monday, which will be made public at the appropriate time. No forward-looking statements here, just a bunch of grins on the faces of my executives who are more and more comforted by our direction.
Expect some blood on the floor in the next 12 months. Suddenly cell suppliers are calling out of nowhere and the race to market share just got much more intense.
Sass
NASDAQ SYMBOL: ICPR