Boeing,the US Aircraft and Military Equipment Supplier had decided to sell its high efficiency solar cells in 2011.Note Boeing Subsidiary had created a record a couple of years ago with a 39.2% multi junction solar cell.These cells are primarily used in spacecraft where low space requirements require the use of high efficiency cells without major cost considerations.Spectrolab has continued to improve on the efficiency of the cells reaching 41.6% in a NREL Lab Test.Boeing has claimed a 60% marketshare of the space solar cell market and hopes to replicate that success on Earth as well.Boeing had earlier said that it would set up a 300 MW capacity by 2010 and market solar cells to CPV companies such as SolFocus.Will Boeing be Successful at Selling High Efficiency Spectrolab Germanium Solar Cells
First Solar,the US based Cadmium Tellurium (Cd-Te) is the lowest cost panel producer in the world today if you don’t include any penalty for low efficiency.Even if you penalize the Cd-Te Technology for its lower efficiency vis-a-vis the higher efficiency crystalline technology,First Solar is clearly the leader with a core cost of 74c/watt.The company has a roadmap of reducing the cost to 52c/watt by 2014 and given its track record it seems quite achievable.In Cd-Te,some new competitors have claimed even lower costs than First Solar but they have yet to prove it in large scale production.General Electric,Abound Solar are some of the other Cd-Te players which are planning commercial production in a year or two.But with around 2 GW of capacity,they will have a lot of catching up to do.
Concentrated Photovoltaic (CPV) Technology Gaining Ground
Concentrated Photovoltaic (CPV) Technology has found some favor in 2010 with some major projects and investments coming its way.CPV Technology which is a poorer cousin of its more illustrious PV Technologies like c-Si and Thin Film has found some attention with its low cost and high efficiency.US Startups like Amonix,Solaria have found some traction bagging some big projects backed by financial investors.Concentrix Solar backed by European Specialist Wafer Producer Soitec has recently announced a partnership deal with US Energy Efficiency Leader Johnson Controls.With c-Si Technology fast reaching its Efficiency Limits,CPV is looked upon as the way forward for the Technology to progress.CPV Technology works by concentrating the energy of the sun through optics and has the potential to dramatically cut the costs as it uses much less materials.The Technology slowed down because of the polysilicon price crash but has found increasing attention in the past few days
Note CPV like the Thin Film Technology saw investments during 2007-2008 when the Polysilicon Prices were quite high at $400/kg.With prices crashing to $50/kg in 2009 and 2010,these technologies ran into a lot of problems.CPV is making a comeback as traditional c-SI based cells are reaching the upper limit of their efficiency.Sunpower which makes the most efficient PV cells recently said that it would look at CPV technology to improve the efficiency of their 24% cells further.Note that Efficiency improvements is the most important cost cutting measure for Solar Technology which would lead to its mass adoption.