Solar panels that use little or no silicon are likely to more than double their global market share to reach 31 percent in 2013 from 14 percent in 2008, according to market research firm iSuppli Tuesday.
The rise of First Solar has helped to establish the foothold of solar thin films in the market, which is still dominated by solar panels made with crystalline silicon cells.
While crystalline silicon cells are made with wafers that are 180 to 230 microns in thickness, a thin-film solar cell is made up of a much thinner layer of semiconductor (a few microns) on a backing that can be a thin sheet of metal or plastic.
Tempe, Ariz.-based First Solar (NSDQ: FSLR) makes glass panels with cadmium-telluride cells. It's poised to become the largest solar panel maker in the world this year, iSuppli said.
First Solar, with just over 1 gigawatt of manufacturing capacity, is able to beat its crystalline silicon technology competitors thanks to its manufacturing costs, which have fallen to less than 90 cents per watt. The company is able to drive the cost down partly by expanding its factories quickly and, of course, finding customers who want its products.
Developers of other types of thin films, such as those using copper-indium-gallium-selenide (CIGS) or amorphous silicon, also are aiming to achieve similar production costs.
Thin films tend to have lower efficiencies – the rate at which the semiconductors convert sunlight to electricity – than silicon cells. Keeping manufacturing costs low, then, makes thin films attractive to customers.
Many of these companies are startups that have yet to achieve any large-scale manufacturing. Some of these technologies are too new to have proven their reliability, and that makes it difficult to sell them to customers who expect the equipment to perform well for at least 20 years.
Some thin-film startups have amassed enough capital and customers to expand their production. Earlier this year, Solyndra, a CIGS solar panel developer in Fremont, Calif., began building a factory that would eventually be able to produce 500 megawatts of solar panels per year.
iSuppli expects the average selling price of thin-film panels to fall to $1.40 per watt in 2010 from $1.70 per watt in 2009. The price for crystalline silicon panels would drop to $2 per watt in 2010 from $2.50 per watt in 2009.
Source: iSuppli
