Shortages in silicon feedstock and global growing demand for PV modules are fueling major growth in thin-film PV manufacturing. For the first time, it appears that thin-films are mature enough technically to provide a more significant amount of product. Amorphous silicon (a-Si) manufacturing is being rapidly scaled up and is leading the way, followed by copper-indium-gallium-diselenide (CIGS) and cadmium-telluride (CdTe) also growing steadily on commercial basis.

While supply of silicon, the raw material for crystalline solar cells (the dominant PV technology with well over 90% market share) remains tight, in coming years thin-film PV modules presence is steadily raising. This silicon supply bottleneck, with no certain ending, is opening up an opportunity for thin-films. The question is only, how fast can traditional thin-film technologies meet the expectations. What is seen now is that:

• a-Si is experiencing a rebirth, including large capacity additions;
• CdTe is entering the marketplace in multi-megawatt volume for the first time;
• CIGS is being used for specialty and small volume commercial products; and
• importantly investment is increasingly robust globally, which will support future capacity additions and technology advances.

However, since current demand for solar PV modules is probably nearly twice as high as supply, there is no chance for thin-films to fill the whole gap. In 2004, worldwide production of PV exceeded 1.3GW, of which thin-films have a small share of around 8-10 percent. That’s similar to the year 2003; but, especially in the US, thin-film PV is doing increasingly well. While shipments in 2002 accounted for 12MW and were relatively static in 2003, they are more than doubling to 25MW in 2004, 60MW in 2005 and over 180MW in 2006. The main pillar for today’s thin-film renaissance is amorphous silicon, but the traditional dominance of a-Si has been certainly challenged by CIGS and CdTe. For the rest of the world, it is more likely that a-Si will add substantial sales during the same period simply because the number of companies involved in producing this PV module technology is much larger.

Development of the thin-film PV technology is shown below:

The complete PV industry trend and positioning could be shown as:

STF has observed that, to a first approximation, the manufacturing cost of the glass-to-glass encapsulated thin-film PV modules only depend on:

i) efficiency of the modules independent of what technology is used (a-Si or CIGS);
ii) the prevailing labor costs; and
iii) the materials utilization.