Watch for fallout in equipment companies as solar crisis hits in 2010

NEW TRIPOLI, USA: Solar equipment companies will feel the impact of a looming solar industry crisis in 2010 according to the report: Opportunities in The Solar Market For Crystalline and Thin Film Solar Cells, published by The Information Network.

“In our release on September 3, we forecast that in 2010 the solar industry will exhibit capacity utilization of 25.7 percent, inventory will be stretched to 133 days, average selling prices could drop below $1 per watt in 2010 and $0.50 in 2011, and as many as 50 percent of the more than 200 solar manufacturers, mired in red ink with current selling prices above $2.00 per watt, may not survive,” noted Dr. Robert Castellano, President of The Information Network.

In addition to the failure and consolidation of the solar panel manufacturers, companies supplying equipment to manufacture panels will be severely impacted. Two things will happen. The obvious impact will be the loss of customers of equipment suppliers.

Solar manufacturers, in their exuberance to increase capacity from 17.6GW in 2009 to 24.2GW will initially purchase equipment only to have it sit idle in factories as inventory stretch to 133 days. As these companies close or consolidate, this equipment will then be sold on the secondary market, further exasperating revenue growth for equipment vendors.

Currently, the equipment companies are experiencing a slowdown because even though solar customers want to buy, financing is still tight. Going forward, the largest solar manufacturers will survive as a customer base. Chinese solar manufacturers, who prefer to purchase low-cost equipment from Taiwan, will also survive, as the Chinese government will subsidize their survival by stimulus packages, generous subsidies, free land, and cash for R&D.

Solar panel manufacturers that have reported losses just in the past few weeks include Energy Conversion Devices Inc, JA Solar, LDK Solar Co., ReneSola Ltd, Solar Power Inc., and Yingli Green Energy Holding Co. Ltd.

“Interestingly, five of the six companies are Chinese. They continue to increase inventory, lose money, and affect the entire solar panel industry. Perhaps, it is an attempt to become the worldwide leader in the solar market by eliminating the competition,” added Dr. Castellano.

In 2008, the top 10 equipment manufacturers of the $4 billion market were:

Table: Ranking of Top 10 Equipment ManufacturersSource: The Information Network, USA

Applied Materials and GT Solar are the only two U.S. manufacturers in the top 10.

Dr. Robert Castellano on how to make solar a ‘hot’ sector again – 2

This is the concluding part of my conversation with Dr. Robert N. Castellano, president of The Information Network, based in New Tripoli, USA.

The question of adding new, additional solar capacity will always arise. Is t certain that no new additional capacity will be brought on board in 2009? Dr. Castellano said: "Actually I said 2010. Solar manufacturers are already losing money this year and the capacity utilization is 27.9 percent. Also, the days of inventory are currently 122, up from 71 days in 2008. If they continue to add new capacity, things will only worsen, exasperating the recession."

Lessons for India?
Turning our attention to India, which has lately been witnessing a lot of talks of building new capacity. According to Dr. Castellano, now is a good time to talk, as a plant will take at least a year to get into full production. By that time, prices should be stabilized and increase.

What then are the lessons to learn from all of this for the Indian solar PV industry?
He added: "What has to be weighed is the cost of making the solar panels in India versus buying the outside the country. It can take several years for a plant to be profitable. If the venture was established from money from India’s government through subsidies, it can lessen the impact of potential losses, while the plants ramp and selling prices move up to a level where production becomes profitable."

I hope this valuable piece of advice is noted by the existing players or those looking to entering the solar photovoltaics segment in India.

Bring down solar production cost per watt
Dr. Castellano had mentioned about First Solar bringing production costs down to $0.93 per watt. How many of the others are capable of matching or bettering this?

He said, for that matter, Oerlikon, expects that its lines will deliver a cost of $0.70 cents per watt by the end of 2010 and has achieved an initial conversion efficiency of 11 percent, which comes out to about 9.5 percent of stabilized efficiency.

How can manufacturers differentiate their solar products?
Another query has been, how should solar manufacturers differentiate their products and how can they do it cheaply?

Certainly, there are new avenues of manufacturing, such as CdTe from First Solar, CIGS from half a dozen manufacturers, multi-junction cells from companies such as Uni-Solar, and building integrated photovoltaics (BIPV) from an increasing number of manufacturers, advised Dr. Castellano.

He said: "These technologies differentiate the companies’ products, but the proportion of wattage manufactured, while growing, is small compared to the majority of solar panels sold using traditional methods of production, i.e., a thin film on a glass substrate.

"Long life and low cost of ownership are of paramount importance if solar is to grow, particularly, if there is to be a large acceptance at the residential level. Manufacturing can introduce defects in solar cells that can result in low electron mobility (EM), electron traps and photo-degradation from UV light. These issues affect the efficiency and lifetime of solar cells and the importance of measuring electron mobility at the wafer and cell stage.

"The lifetime of minority carriers has been widely identified to be the key material parameter determining the conversion efficiency of pn-junctions in silicon solar cells. Defects in the crystal lattice reduce the charge carrier lifetime and thus limit the performance of the solar cells. Another major efficiency loss is due to impurities in the cell.

"These can be foreign atoms or molecules in the crystal lattice (including the dopant atoms), and provide sites where electrons and holes can recombine, thereby reducing the number of charged particles available to create an electrical current.

"Lehighton Electronics (Lehighton, PA) is an example of a company that has developed a variety of tools to test and measure solar wafers. One tool can measure sheet resistance and resistivity to see if there is any subsurface damage. Another system can measure minority carrier lifetimes, while a third model can find traps in solar wafers."

How to make solar hot (all over again!)?
Finally, isn't solar hot enough ? What would really make it hot (all over again)?

According to Dr Castellano, oil is now $70 a barrel [around August 23, 2009] and rising, which, to him suggests that people will start rethinking alternative energy. However, the second point about the credit market crunch remains. Who can get a loan to build a solar plant anyway? That will change once the recession is over.

He added: "Spain has not resumed its incentive program and will subsidize just 500 megawatts of solar projects this year, down sharply from 2,400 megawatts in 2008. Mainland China’s stimulus and now Taiwan’s incentives (we suspect money coming in from Mainland China) will counter the downturn in Spain and Germany.

"In the past six months we have seen somewhat of a stabilization in the worldwide economies and the share prices of solar companies ramp in recent weeks.

The passage of stimulus bills around the world will provide a ray of hope for the industry. In the US, for example, the new Stimulus Bill of 2009 changes the rules on how investment tax credits are awarded, allowing companies that are building power plants to take 30 percent of the cost as a tax break in a project's first year. This could prove vital because, in the last quarter of 2008, 10 out of 14 tax-equity providers stopped doing business in the solar market."

On SolarPA
Unknown to many in this part of the world, Dr Castellano started SolarPA, a few months ago. Providing more details, he said: "SolarPA, a company I started a few months ago, has demonstrated increases in efficiency of polycrystalline and silicon solar cells by up to 10 percent using a proprietary nanomaterial coating. Increasing the efficiency by 10 percent will automatically increase a 50MW production line to 55MW, reducing material and labor costs.

"We are looking for funding and I have been in talks with solar material and equipment manufacturers to partner for further development. We have NDAs with Applied Materials, Air Products, and Baker Mallinkdrodt, and are expecting them from Oerlikon and Ferro. These companies would develop the technology and then our joint partnership would license it to the solar manufacturers.

"Another possibility is to get investor money to develop the technology in-house, eliminating the need for the middlemen above. 1366 Technologies, for example, is developing a technology that it claims can boost multicrystalline silicon cells from 16 percent efficiency to 18 percent efficiency, thereby reducing their cost per watt, by giving the solar cells a rougher texture. The startup raised $12.4 million in 2008.

"Xerocoat developed a coating strategy that increases efficiency by 4 percent on not only a multicrystalline silicon cell but thin film cells as well. The company received $3 million in DOE funding in 2009.

To be concluded

Industry-wide solar crisis coming next year –- Thank you China!

NEW TRIPOLI, USA: The solar industry is at a critical stage and 50 percent of the existing solar manufacturers may not survive 2010 according to the report: Opportunities in The Solar Market For Crystalline and Thin Film Solar Cells, published by The Information Network.

“I wrote only a month ago that massive inventory buildup and huge overcapacity were having a serious impact on the solar panel industry and its manufacturers,” noted Dr. Robert Castellano, president of The Information Network. “To reiterate, inventory is averaging 122 days in 2009 versus 71 days in 2008. Capacity utilization (amount of production capacity actually produced) dropped to 27.9 percent in 2009 from 48 percent in 2008.”

For 2010, I “cautiously” anticipated that no new additional capacity will be brought on board, maintaining 2009 levels of 17,551 MW. This would bring capacity utilization to 35.4 percent and reduce inventory to 96 days on average for all of 2010. That ideal scenario is represented in the table below.Source: The Information Network

If solar manufactures went ahead and installed all the capacity planned for 2010, it would even worsen the outcome of the solar industry –- the utilization would decrease further to 26.8 percent and days of inventory would increase to 127 days, as shown in the table.

Now, I am hearing that small solar panel manufacturers in China are planning to bring an additional 1 GW of panels to the market by the end of 2009, which we have learned based on manufacturing equipment purchases. While it represents an increase of less than 5 percent of the planned capacity, there are several implications.

1. China’s solar panel manufacturers, exasperating the situation by adding more capacity, are already dropping prices to $1.80 per watt for polysilicon-based products, which is lower than the $1.85 level we projected back in March for the end of 2009. By way of comparison, the average selling price in Q3 2008 was $4.05 per watt.

2. Because of economies of scale, whereby the more solar panels manufactured, the lower the cost to make them, other manufacturers will increase capacity to their planned 2010 levels in order to compete against the Chinese. We will now reach the last column in the table –- 25.7 percent capacity utilization and 133 days inventory.

3. Average selling prices could drop below $1 per watt in 2010 and $0.50 in 2011.

4. As many as 50 percent of the more than 200 solar manufacturers, mired in red ink with current selling prices above $2.00 per watt, may not survive.

Dr. Robert Castellano on how to make solar a'hot' sector again - 1

Last week, I was very fortunate enough to be able to get into a conversation with Dr. Robert N. Castellano, president of The Information Network, based in New Tripoli, USA. It all started with a column, which he writes regularly in “The Street.” One of the recent colums of Dr. Castellano touched upon –- What could make solar hot again?

This first part will touch upon issues such as six reasons for cloudy solar skies and how to rectify the current oversupply situation in solar cell manufacturing, status of a-Si solar cell makers, crystalline vs. thin film capacity, and impact of prices.

How to rectify the solar cell oversupply?
As I'd asked iSuppli too, in one of my recent posts, I also quizzed Dr. Castellano on whether the previously committed capacity expansions have caused solar cell manufacturing oversupply? Also, why had this happened and how could this be corrected?

He said: “The problem will rectify itself when demand catches up with supply, which will take several years. Until then, suppliers are faced with lower prices and margins. I was the first to point out on March 5 2008, in my blog on Seeking Alpha in an article entitled “Contradictions in the Solar Industry” that “The solar industry is faced with a huge oversupply of solar panels planned for production in 2008, but no one seems to notice… or care. Shares in many solar companies such as Evergreen Solar), First Solar SunPower, and Suntech Power have surged with the booming solar market.”

Six reasons for cloudy solar skies
He added: “On November 18, 2008, in another blog on Seeking Alpha entitled “Six Reasons for Cloudy Skies on the Solar Energy Industry” that the problems in the solar industry were the result of the following:

1. With oil at $60 a barrel, who cares about alternative energy? It is a short sighted view, but with the credit market crunch, who can get a loan to build solar plants anyway?”

2. The high price of oil in the past year was a catalyst for the development in other alternative energy sources, and not just solar! Advances in wind, geothermal and hydropower energy are reducing the cost of wind power to a point at which it is becoming competitive with traditional energy sources. Nuclear power plants -- smaller than a garden shed and able to power 20,000 homes -- will be on sale within five years, say scientists at Los Alamos, the US government laboratory, which developed the first atomic bomb. Among these alternative energy sources, hydropower and nuclear have the lowest carbon footprints (carbon dioxide produced during operation).

3. Spain, a huge buyer of solar, reduced its incentive program to aid buyers in 2009. In California, a seemingly green state, Prop. 7 was defeated in the November election with a whopping 65 percent of the voters saying NO. One reason: electricity consumers would pay 10 percent above the market rates for renewable power forever.

4. The spot market price of six-inch solar-grade wafers have fallen to $9 from a high of $12.50 in September. This bodes poorly for thin film makers and equipment suppliers. The thin film solar panel market and hence, the equipment market grew strongly because of the shortage of polysilicon. Now that polysilicon is abundant and lower priced, why make thin film panels with 8 percent efficiency when you get 16+ percent efficiency with silicon wafers?

5. “Utilization is at only 56 percent. Our analysis of 103 solar manufacturers shows that panel production capacity in 2009 will be 15 GW whereas only 8.3 GW will be sold.

6. The dollar has appreciated strongly against the euro by nearly 25 percent. Germany is the world's largest PV market. US solar companies have had to adjust selling prices to generate sales, reducing profit margins.”

Have companies been overlooking inventory problems?
In this context, weren't the solar companies doing enough to check all of these during the downturn of Q4-08? Even the 71 days to 122 days excess supply or inventory is huge!

Dr. Castellano said: “The solar companies were benefiting from the low price of polysilicon as a result of excess inventory in that sector. They were renegotiating contract prices with the poly suppliers and dropping prices. With money in place, they continued to build capacity well into 2009. All the factors discussed above took everyone by surprise (witness the stock market crash) and the recession has lasted much longer than initially forecast.

Where does this place a-Si solar cell makers?
How is all of this potentially setting the stage for the failure of multiple cell manufacturers, particularly those pursuing a-Si thin film solar cells?

He added that thin film cells are still less expensive to make and companies are working to improve their efficiency. Also, they appear to work at stated efficiency under lower incident light conditions.

“The issue is the economics in a solar farm where they are installed. The installation price is the same as a polycrystalline panel. Since the efficiency is lower and it takes more panels to reach the same wattage as polycrystalline, it also takes more hook-ups and frames during installation.

“If the panels move, there is another factor in the motors to move them. However, the production cost is lower than the polycrystalline panels. Oerlikon, expects its lines will deliver a cost of 70 cents per watt by the end of 2010 and has achieved an initial conversion efficiency of 11 percent, which comes out to about 9.5 percent of stabilized efficiency.”

Crystalline vs. thin film capacity
There is still a huge amount of solar cell manufacturing capacity in crystalline silicon solar cell, rather than thin film. Are there any chances of that starting to change any time soon?

Dr. Castellano said: “Until last year, Germany had been the world's largest solar market thanks to its feed-in tariffs, which require utilities to buy all the solar energy produced at premium, government-set prices. As a result, analysts now expect Germany, which doesn't have an annual cap like the one in Spain, to become the biggest market again in 2009.Germany installed 1.35 gigawatts of solar energy systems in 2008, and it could add another 1.5 gigawatts in 2009.

“Spain took the lead last year, but the government has since reduced the subsidies and capped the amount of energy that could be sold under the subsidy program. The financial market crisis has made it difficult for developers to line up financing for solar power projects. Spain, which added a few gigawatts of solar in 2008 alone, now has a 500-megawatt cap for 2009. All of these forces have led to an oversupply of silicon panels.

“As governments -- Germany and Spain were a driving force – in the solar industry’s run-up, they were a factor in the downturn. Once the recession is over and liquidity returns, they will mitigate the overcapacity, particularly as prices are so low and there is pent-up demand for new installations.”

Impact of Q4 on overall prices and industry
Another aspect worth examining is the overall impact of this (Q4) on overall prices and the industry.

Dr. Castellano said that silicon used to sell for more than $300 per kilogram on the spot market and $150 per kilogram for long-term contracts a few years ago. Silicon prices have since fallen significantly over the past year. In fact, the long-term contract price has dropped about 50 percent, close to the spot market price of $67 per kilogram, or about $0.50 per watt.

“Polysilicon panels are selling at $2.25 to $2.50 per watt from $4.17 in Q2 2008. We expect prices to decline further throughout the remainder of the year,” he noted.

In part 2 of this conversation, I will be discussing additional capacity in solar, new capacity in India, and of course, lessons to learn for the Indian solar industry. Watch this space, folks!

Are clouds dissipating on solar energy industry?

NEW TRIPOLI, USA: Have economic conditions improved for solar cell manufacturers or just changed in the past six months are questions detailed a the report: Opportunities in The Solar Market For Crystalline and Thin Film Solar Cells, published by The Information Network.

On November 18, 2008, we issued a press release entitled “Six Reasons for Cloudy Skies on the Solar Energy Industry”. All six issues presented cast a partial eclipse of the solar market.

Subsequently, a week later we forecast that the solar market would drop from 40 percent growth to 25 percent growth in 2009. At that time, thoughts of a downturn in the luminous market were considered a heresy and comments to the article reflected the attitude of the time -– up, up, up!

Six months have gone by and its time to revisit these issues to see if anything has changed from a fundamental standpoint. The original issues presented are repeated, along with an update on the current environment:

1. With oil at $60 a barrel, who cares about alternative energy? It's a short sighted view, but with the credit market crunch, who can get a loan to build solar plants anyway?

Oil is now $70 a barrel and rising, which to us suggests that people will start rethinking alternative energy. But the second point about the credit market crunch remains. Who can get a loan to build a solar plant anyway?

2. The high price of oil in the past year was a catalyst for development in other alternative energy sources, not just solar. Advances in wind, geothermal, and hydropower energy are reducing the cost of wind power to a point at which it is becoming competitive with traditional energy sources.

Nuclear power plants smaller than a garden shed and able to power 20,000 homes will be on sale within five years, say scientists at Los Alamos, the US government laboratory which developed the first atomic bomb. Among these alternative energy sources, hydropower and nuclear have the lowest carbon footprints (carbon dioxide produced during operation).

Other alternative energy programs have been affected by the downturn. Most serious was the recent announcement by President Obama that he was terminating the Yucca Mountain nuclear waste depository. This decision gives nuclear power an uncertain future, which may be a benefit to the solar energy.

3. Spain, a huge buyer of solar, reduced its incentive program to aid buyers in 2009. In California, a seemingly green state, Prop. 7 was defeated in the November election with a whopping 65 percent of the voters saying NO. One reason: electricity consumers would pay 10 percent above market rates for renewable power forever.

Spain has not resumed its incentive program and will subsidize just 500 megawatts of solar projects this year, down sharply from 2,400 megawatts in 2008. Mainland China’s stimulus and now Taiwan’s incentives (we suspect money coming in from Mainland China) will counter the downturn in Spain and Germany.

4. The spot market price of 6-inch solar-grade wafers have fallen to $9 from a high of $12.50 in September. This bodes poorly for thin film makers and equipment suppliers.

The thin film solar panel market and hence the equipment market grew strongly because of the shortage of polysilicon. Now that polysilicon is abundant and lower priced, why make thin film panels with 8% efficiency when you get 16+ percent efficiency with silicon wafers?

The spot market price of 6-inch solar-grade wafers has now dropped to below US$3.50 per unit. Winners are the environment and polysilicon solar manufacturers. Losers are the thin film solar manufacturers unless they can achieve a way of increasing efficiency, such as a thin film nano coating being developed by SolarPA in Pennsylvania.

5. Utilization is at only 56 percent. Our analysis of 103 solar manufacturers shows that panel production capacity in 2009 will be 15 GW whereas only 8.3 GW will be sold.

Utilization has not worsened as solar companies are struggling to sell products and new capacity has been put on hold, particularly in Asia.

While polysilicon prices have dropped, solar cell manufacturers are also experiencing a 25 percent drop in revenues in 2009 from last year. The drop in solar cell prices to below $1.50 per watt is not increasing demand, which we forecast last year.

6. The dollar has appreciated strongly against the euro by nearly 25 percent. Germany is the world's largest PV market. US solar companies have had to adjust selling prices to generate sales, reducing profit margins.

On November 18, 2008, 1 Euro was equal to US$1.269. On June 15, 2009, 1 Euro was equal to US$1.385, an appreciation in the Euro of 9 percent. Large, but insignificant in light of the overall economic issues currently facing Europe.

In the past six months we have seen somewhat of a stabilization in the worldwide economies and the share prices of solar companies ramp in recent weeks.

In fundamental terms, while there have been changes in these 6 issues, there are no overriding factors to change our forecast of a downturn in the solar industry through 2009 with demand resuming in 2010 back to a 40 percent growth we projected last year.

Strategies for gaining share in the solar market (Part II)

NEW TRIPOLI, USA: Solar cell manufacturers must differentiate themselves during the slowdown in the solar cell market, according to a report: Opportunities in The Solar Market For Crystalline and Thin Film Solar Cells, recently published by The Information Network.

We wrote in Part I how solar manufacturers can differentiate their products, particularly during the economic slowdown.

We discussed increasing efficiency. For example, a local company (contact us for details) has developed a coating for amorphous and polycrystalline cells that can improve efficiency between 8 percent and 12 percent using non-vacuum techniques so that the cost is in the cents per watt range.

Tunable refractive indices make these materials excellent candidates for improving both thermal conductivity and absorption bandwidths. When these unique, novel coatings are coupled with nano-enhanced polymeric coatings, significantly improved durability and extended product life can be anticipated. UV resistance, resistance to optical crazing, and the effect of adverse weather and temperature conditions is also predicted. Films can be coated on any surface.

The other strategy for gaining share, which was mentioned in Part 1 and is discussed here, is to improve reliability:

Long life and low cost of ownership are of paramount importance if solar is to grow, particularly if there is to be a large acceptance at the residential level.

Manufacturing can introduce defects in solar cells that can result in low electron mobility (EM), electron traps and photo-degradation from UV light. These issues affect the efficiency and lifetime of solar cells and the importance of measuring electron mobility at the wafer and cell stage.

The lifetime of minority carriers has been widely identified to be the key material parameter determining the conversion efficiency of pn-junctions in silicon solar cells. Defects in the crystal lattice reduce the charge carrier lifetime and thus limit the performance of the solar cells.

Another major efficiency loss is due to impurities in the cell. These can be foreign atoms or molecules in the crystal lattice (including the dopant atoms), and provide sites where electrons and holes can recombine, thereby reducing the number of charged particles available to create an electrical current.

Lehighton Electronics (Lehighton, PA) is an example of a company that has developed a variety of tools to test and measure solar wafers. One tool can measure sheet resistance and resistivity to see if there is any subsurface damage. Another system can measure minority carrier lifetimes, while a third model can find traps in solar wafers.

Manufacturers and buyers of silicon wafers can benefit from knowledge about the quality of the product. Manufacturers can adjust growing parameters to minimize defect and impurity problems and buyers can evaluate product before going to the expense of turning them into solar cells.

Strategies for gaining share in solar market

NEW TRIPOLI, USA: Solar cell manufacturers must differentiate themselves during the slowdown in the solar cell market, according to a report Opportunities in The Solar Market For Crystalline and Thin Film Solar Cells, recently published by The Information Network.

The solar cell manufacturing industry has become a “me too” business. Solar companies manufacturing polycrystalline panels buy the same polysilicon and wafers from less than a dozen material suppliers. Companies buying an amorphous silicon thin film process line from Applied Materials or Oerlikon are making the same films as other customers from these equipment vendors.

Certainly there are new avenues of manufacturing, such as CdTe from First Solar, CIGS from half a dozen manufacturers, multi-junction cells from companies such as Uni-Solar, and building integrated photovoltaics (BIPV) from an increasing number of manufacturers. These technologies differentiate these companies’ products, but the proportion of wattage manufactured, while growing, is small compared to the majority of solar panels sold using traditional methods of production, i.e., a thin film on a glass substrate.

How can the majority of solar manufacturers differentiate their products, particularly during the economic slowdown that has dropped capacity utilization to below 50 percent, and most importantly, how can they do it cheaply? Aside from the traditional lingo such as reduce costs or economies of scale, there are better ways -– increase efficiency and improve reliability.

Increase efficiency
Amorphous silicon thin film manufacturers are working on a micromorph structure in which a second layer of silicon is deposited. Applied Materials and Oerlikon are spending vast amounts of R&D to get the solar cells made on their equipment from an efficiency of less than 8 percent to above 10 percent to be competitive with CdTe and CIGS, but they are a few years away. Even so, the added cost of the vacuum equipment to deposit the additional layer can cost upwards of $50 million for a 60MW plant.

“A local company (contact me for details) has developed a coating for amorphous and polycrystalline cells that can improve efficiency between 8 and 12 percent using non-vacuum techniques so that the cost is in the cents per watt range,” noted Dr. Robert N. Castellano, President of The Information Network.

“Tunable refractive indices make these materials excellent candidates for improving both thermal conductivity and absorption bandwidths. When these unique, novel coatings are coupled with nano-enhanced polymeric coatings, significantly improved durability and extended product life can be anticipated. UV resistance, resistance to optical crazing, and the effect of adverse weather and temperature conditions is also predicted. Films can be coated on any surface,” he added.

Research was performed at an acclaimed university in Eastern PA, and the company is now looking for additional funding to optimize deposition parameters and coating properties with the intent of licensing the IP to all solar manufacturers.

Increasing the efficiency by 10 percent will increase a 50MW production line to 60MW. At a selling price of $3 per watt, that comes to added revenues of $30 million at an added cost of $1-2 per panel, that’s per panel of 100-200W, or 50,000-$100,000 per year for the 50MW facility. Imagine the possibility if this coating was put on all 7GW of power we estimate will be installed this year as indicated in a release in late November 2008.

Improve reliability
The high costs of solar panels and their installation keep them out of the “throwaway” mentality. Long life and low cost of ownership are paramount, particularly in space applications. Manufacturing can introduce defects in solar cells that can result in low electron mobility (EM), electron traps and photo-degradation from UV light.

Part 2 of this article will discuss how these issues affect efficiency and lifetime of solar cells and the importance of measuring electron mobility at the wafer and cell stage, and how these results can increase market share for the manufacturer.