Solar Thin Film Technology has been growing rapidly despite falling costs of the mainstream Photovoltaic Crystalline Silicon Technology.While a number of Weaker Hands in Thin Film have downed shutters,Thin Film Producers continue to grow and expand.The massive growth potential of Solar Energy makes it possible for both of these PV technologies to flourish.Thin Film Technology unlike c-Si has a number of variants.Amorphous Silicon (a-Si),Copper Indium Gallium Sulphide (CIGs) and Cadmium Tellurium (Cd-Te) are the 3 main types of Thin Film Technology.There are a number of manufacturers of all of these 3 types of Technology.CIGs Technology is said to have the most potential in improving efficiency and competing with c-Si,however Cd-Te is currently the top dog as the world’s biggest solar producer First Solar currently uses this technology.a-Si Technology is not that hot with low efficiencies however Oerlikon and Sharp are pushing ahead with developing this technology.Here is a list of the world’s top Thin Film Companies.
The European Solar Companies have found things going tough in 2009 as the solar market changed radically with the Lehman crisis.As the prices of the raw material Polysilicon crashed and Chinese competition increased,these companies started bleeding red ink in a prodigious manner.The high cost structure of these companies with factories in Europe stood naked against the competition.With high debt loads,there was a high change that these companies would go bankrupt.Most of them like Q-Cells,REC started to move manufacturing to Asia while Solarworld moved to Europe.Other smaller companies muddled through.However a spectacular 2010 growth in world solar demand has brought new life into these companies.With capacity constrained,even their higher prices could be absorbed by solar installers.These companies have reported much better 2010 results with Solarworld and REC leading the way.
Chinese Solar Companies have increased their global marketshare of the Solar Panel to around 60% from virtually 0% in 2006.The Solar Panel Dominance of the Chinese has been growing since last year as Europeans and Japanese have found no answer to their cheap solar panels.Q-Cells,Solarworld and other European companies have been reduced to bit players in the Solar Market as the low cost Asians have ramped up their capacity and shipments in 2009 and 2010.The only reason that they continue to survive is the more than 100% growth in the Solar Demand in 2010.With oversupply expected in 2011,Europeans will be virtually wiped out from the world solar panel market due to their high cost uncompetitive business models.European solar factories are closing as the remaining companeis shift their production to low cost Malaysia and Singapore.
Malaysia is set to become one of the largest solar panel producing nations overtaking much larger rivals USA and Japan as world class companies start/expand capacities in Malaysia.Every country is trying to promoter Green Industry in the fight for leadership of this new age industry and to create high paying green jobs.Billions of Dollars in Green Stimulus has been doled out by governments but with varying degrees of success.USA has managed to squander most of its Green Subsidies despite possessing a very strong technological base as US Companies shutter US factories to outsource production to Asia and Mexico.European Countries have seen a similar phenomenon as their high costs force domestic companies to shift to Asia for their survival.China and Taiwan are the largest solar cell producers in Asia due to their low costs,good infrastructure and massive government support.Taiwan has also been able to leverage its semiconductor strengths with companies like TSMC and AUO expanding into solar energy.However Malaysia has been a surprise winner as well.It is important to understand the reasons behind Malaysia’s success as it has beat countries with much larger solar energy markets like USA and Japan.It also has no massive semiconductor industry like Taiwan which can redeploy its skills.It has only recently introduced a Feed in Tariff Policy to promote Renewable Energy
Not only Europe,even US is rapidly losing Green Jobs to Asia.Earlier Evergreen Solar had decided to shut down its US plant to set up a factory in China and Energy Conversion Devices is laying off workers to hire more in Mexico.The high costs of labor and capital have made it unfeasible for Western companies to manufacture in the Developed Nations.High Subsidies in the form of Low Interest Long Term Loans,Tax Holidays,Free Land have made the Asian countries irresistible to US companies.First Solar which is the largest manufacturer of panels in the world has most of its production in Malaysia where it enjoys a 15 year tax holiday.Chinese Company’s get massive subsidies from the government.This combined with extremely low worker and managerial salaries make western factories totally uncompetitive in a globalized world.REC which is one of the world’s biggest solar polysilicon and wafer producers has decided to shut down its module plant in Sweden.While the reason given is isolation from other factories,I suspect the costs are too high in expensive Sweden.Another European Solar Factory closes as Green Industry moves to Low Cost,Subsidy Rich Asia
Honda’s modules have an efficiency of 11.6% which seems lower than those claimed by the TSMC-Stion,Miasole and Q-Cells.These companies are claiming 13% efficiency though none of these companies have large scale commercial production as of now.Q-Cells and Miasole are at the head of the CIGs pack with companies like Nanosolar,Solyndra,Solar Frontier and TSMC-Stion closely following.CIGs technology is said to be the best thin film technology better than the Cd-Te technology used by First Solar and a-Si technology used by Sharp and the now bankrupt Applied Materials thin film division.