Commercial Status of the PV Industry in 2004 ...

August 2004 ? NREL/CP-520-36681

The Commercial Status of the PV Industry in 2004--Identifying Important and Unimportant Factors

Preprint

Bolko von Roedern

To be presented at the 14th Workshop on Crystalline

Silicon Solar Cells and Modules

Winter Park, Colorado

August 8-11, 2004

National Renewable Energy Laboratory

1617 Cole Boulevard, Golden, Colorado 80401-3393 303-275-3000 ? Operated for the U.S. Department of Energy Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy by Midwest Research Institute ? Battelle Contract No. DE-AC36-99-GO10337

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The Commercial Status of the PV Industry in 2004 ? Identifying Important and Unimportant Factors

Bolko von Roedern

NREL, NCPV, Thin Film Partnership, Golden, CO 80401-3393

This Paper reviews the current status of the commercial PV Industry. It assesses the current status of commercially available modules, most of which use silicon wafers or ribbons. My analysis will show that the choice of Si wafers or substrates, once deemed to be the most important aspect, ended up making only negligible differences for commercial products, as long as cells are prepared by diffusion and screen printing. I will also address the prospects and requirements for both next generation thin-film modules and super-high (>20%) efficient commercial crystalline Si cells. It is shown that traditional recombination loss analyses provide a poor tool for understanding limitations of cell and module performance, because those analytical schemes ignore dominating interactions between different loss mechanisms (e.g., of surface and bulk recombination).

1. Results used for Discussion

A survey was conducted using PV module manufacturer's product specifications on their corporate websites. Table 1 gives the results of the survey as of May 2004. The ranking by efficiency was calculated as module power divided by total module area.

Eff. Module (%)

16.9 SunPower SPR210

T.coeff. comments (%P/oC)

na (`low') Rear contact cells, FZ wafers

16.1 Sanyo HIP190BA2

-0.33

"HIT"heterojunction cell, n-type CZ wafers

14.2 Sharp NT-185-U1

na

CZ wafers, diffused cells

13.5 BP4170

-0.5

Laser-grooved buried contacts, CZ wafers

13.1 Kyocera KC167G

VOC=-0.12 Cast multi-Si wafers

13.0 RWESchott ASE-300- -0.47

EFG ribbon

DGF/315

12.8 Sharp ND-167-U1

na

Cast multi-Si wafers

12.7 BP3160

-0.5

Cast multi-Si wafers ("Solarex")

12.1 Shell SQ160-C

-0.52

CZ wafers ("semisquare, CA Siemens Solar")

11.6 Evergreen Solar EC115 11.5 GEPV-165M

-0.4

"String ribbon" Si

(up to)-0.5 Reclaimed semiconductor wafers ("AstroPower")

11.1 Shell S115-C

-0.45

Cast multi-Si wafers (German cells)

11.0 W?rthSolar WS31050/80 -0.36

"CIGS" thin-film

9.4 Shell Solar ST-40

-0.6

"CIGSS" thin-film

7.6 First Solar FS55 6.4 Mitsubishi Heavy MA100 6.3 Uni-Solar US-64

-0.25

-0.2 ( ................
................

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