Quote from keanu89:
I've never heard that Germany is sending panels back. Could you please give me a source, an article or someone I can call? Solarbuzz says the market in Germany is growing at 30% or so, and the subsidies are not going anywhere now that half of East-Germany is employed in the solar industry.
Germany was growth driver for at least 5 years. It was not meant to last forever. Solarbuzz is correct, but not up to date. A lot of companies based their operations there, some even stopped bother with selling to US. Last I heard is that there are too many panels in Germany and the growth has curbed off. It's a natural cycle. After all, that nation is not THAT big. Yet almost every European, Asian, & American manufacturer has a selling base there, let alone sales reps.
The fact that panel pricing has changed little in the last year is another sign that Germany's growth is lower than capacity growth. It was projected to fall off as well.
High costs? Which thin-film technologies are you talking about? CIGS, a-Si, CdTe? a-Si efficiency is too low to be competitive with silicon, but the cost is much lower than silicon. Remember that cost is a factor of many things. For silicon cells, first the silicon has to be refined, grown into crystals, cut, handled, etched, mounted etc, and then you have 30 pound, hard, fragile panels to install. CIGS is competitive cost-wise, but has ALOT MORE potential for cost reduction than silicon, cost can be cut to 1/10th with mass production. If you look at the whole production value chain for all the different technologies, you'll see.
In the real world, where you actually have to install solar systems, then gauge production and deal with customers, your standard c-Si based panels still rule. You think they are fragile but they are actually made to withstand a category II hurricane.
It's one thing to hypothetically evaluate everything from a computer based on websites, it's another when you have to order materials and install systems. Especially when you have limited roof space. During a solar panel glut, every installer is seeking alternatives, the smarter ones were looking for new technology years ago. It's just not there for the right price, the proper performance and the proper quantity.
Silicon refining is being advanced as well, one proposal I saw had a process which would decrease costs to 1/10th. Some Austrian investor ended up grabbing them. The problem with silicon production is the heavy investment needed to start operation. During the tech bust, a lot of capacity was shut down and dismantled. New capacity has been going online, but not prior to price gouging. The silicon was never the issue, it was production capacity & economies of scale. Supply & Demand, cause only a little over a few years ago, panels were half the cost they were today.
The challenge with CIGS is to build reliable and consistent mass production. Once you have a standardized and consistent process, ramping up production to several hundred mw is just about buying and installing more standard printing machines, unless you use custom ones. Using standard machines is the way to get your costs down. The price of silicon cells can't be reduced like CIGS or CdTe, 'cause the production process is too complex, energy demanding, and you need ALOT of an expensive raw material - silicon. I assume selling the cells will be easier if you have the right partner (for example a building integrator).
Well it's obvious that mass production is a big factor. Starting a solar cell production facility is a minimum 50-100 million dollar investment which can take 1-2 years to put up. A lot of process has been made cookie cutter by companies like SPIR. Cause essentially, almost all PV production is about the same, no matter what the sales reps keep trying to say.
DSTI is claiming to have one of the top CIGS technologies out there. But I already mentioned my take on it. I want to take a position at this price, but I am suspecting that the whole thing is a scam. I been following them for at least 2 years, they claimed to have production online a year ago. I have yet to see anything out there or been able to get a response. Cause if they can save us even $.50/watt, it's on.
In the end it's all about $/watt figures and ROIs. New technology is cool and flashy, but numbers speak more when it comes to buying system installation or making decisions. For example, little known fact is that solar heat-electric is still superior to Photovoltaics, even though PV is the future. Well really, organic PV is the future. Spraying it out of a can onto any surface is what the nano tech wizards are projecting.
