HCPV: Technology on way to utility market - growing interest for III-V players

DUBLIN, IRELAND: Research and Markets has announced the addition of the "High Concentration Photovoltaics" report to its offering.

The growing HCPV market reveals a strong attention of numerous industrial players. Indeed, HCPV technology development requires knowledge from various technology fields and therefore many technology players (wafer manufacturers, epi-foundries, IC companies, mechanical engineering companies, etc.) could take part in this development.

Although HCPV market is shared currently mainly between a few established players with long project track records and important pipelines for new installations, like Amonix, Soitec and SolFocus, a fast growing HCPV market will provide new opportunities also for newcomers coming with novel approaches.

The compatibility of all HCPV system components is crucial for maximizing the system performance, reliability and durability as well as for decreasing its cost. Such compatibility could be well controlled by a vertically-integrated player that covers the whole technology chain. However, the current small HCPV market size does not enable the advantages of a vertical integration as known from the flat-plate PV. Such integration would entail high economic risk.

Therefore, the HCPV supply chain is currently very dispersed and system elements are supplied by a big number of players accounting for 80+ companies. However, there is an increasing demand for stronger cooperation between different technology players in order to improve the performance of HCPV systems and to lower the manufacturing costs.