Thin-film/organic PV manufacturing equipment market to double in 2009
Thin-film/organic PV
manufacturing equipment
market to double in 2009
In the past three to five years, interest in tance of economies of scale, integration of where the solutions to these challenges will
both thin-film photovoltaics (TFPV) and manufacturing facilities and approaches be coming from. The report also forecasts
organic photovoltaics (OPV) has grown to manufacturing new cell types are also the capacity of TFPV and OPV plants that
considerably, driven by the usual benefits covered. are currently being built throughout the
of alternative energy technologies— Printing promises to reduce manufac- world or likely to be built in the near fu-
renewability, low carbon emissions, price turing costs, although it also faces chal- ture. Finally, it includes projections of the
stability, tax incentives and feed-in tariffs— lenges when it comes to producing the expenditures of TFPV firms on production
as well as by the promise of low-cost, easier highest efficiency cells. Nonetheless, the equipment over an eight year period.
manufacturing than crystalline silicon PV market for printing equipment used in the In addition to the analysis itself, the
and the ability to manufacture on flexible manufacture of TFPV cells will grow from report includes profiles of the manu-
substrates. around $40 million in 2008 to over $750 facturing operations of 15 major firms
As a result, manufacturing capacity million in 2015. actively involved in the production of solar
for thin-film and organic photovoltaics is And while First Solar will be hard to products in the TFPV and OPV sector,
expected to grow from approximately 2 GWp pass in the cadmium telluride (CdTe) sec- including EPV Solar, Flexcell, Innovalight,
(gigawatts at peak sunlight) in 2008 to tor, the race for dominance in the CIGS PowerFirm, Sharp, Uni-Solar, DayStar
29 GWp by 2015, according to “The Future and OPV sectors has just begun. By 2015 Technologies, Global Solar, HelioVolt,
of Thin Film and Organic Photovoltaics these two sectors combined will account Miasolé, Nanosolar, First Solar, Konarka
Manufacturing,” a new report from indus- for 19 percent and 10 of aggregate capacity. Technologies and G24 Innovations.
try analyst NanoMarkets. At the same time, “The Future of Thin Film and Organic Details about the report can be found
the value of manufacturing equipment Photovoltaics Manufacturing” analyzes the at www.nanomarkets.net.
purchased by thin-film PV (TFPV) and underlying performance of TFPV and OPV
organic PV (OPV) firms will grow from plants built to date, identifies the major
$450 million in 2008 to $4.8 billion in challenges to TFPV/manufacturing and
2015.
Nanomarkets’ report is the next in a
series to address the emerging thin-film
and organic photovoltaics markets. Previ-
ous reports in 2008 covered the materials
markets, modules markets and building-in-
tegrated photovoltaic (BIPV) markets in the
thin-film and organic photovoltaic sector.
The report finds that annual manu-
facturing equipment purchases by TFPV/
OPV firms will reach over $1 billion in
2009, more than double 2008. The market
for TFPV/OPV equipment is expected to
flatten in 2010 as solar cell makers fully
utilize the capacity they have rapidly put
into place since 2007, but growth will
resume. The market is expected to reach
$4.8 billion in 2015.
One question that the report deals with
specifically is how important the future
role of printing will be to the PV sector,
and which equipment firms are having
success selling into this sector. Matters such
as the tradeoffs between low manufactur-
ing costs and cell efficiencies, the impor-
Image courtesy DEK International.
www.globalsolartechnology.com Global Solar Technology – November/December 2008 – 35
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