Making photovoltaics a low-cost source of clean and renewable energy is the main goal for most of developed countries. Many of them have agreed on a 20% renewable energy target by 2020, and some already started to implement aggressive feed-in-tariffs to finance this objective. But the question is how do we get there from what has been achieved so far? What would happen if governments partially stop financing the PV industry through incentive program cuts as in Germany for instance? Can today’s technologies be competitive without the incentives or do we need technical evolutions, or even technical breakthroughs to get there?
 
INTRODUCTION
 
There is no doubt that the government incentive programs helped industrials to achieve, step by step, drastic cost reduction and performance improvements in a very short period of time but without real revolutions. The PV industry has also seen the emergence of largescale production facilities, international R&D centres, and innovative equipment makers thus resulting in the impressive cost reduction we know. But if large production facilities can play the scale effect card to lower the cost of raw material and increase their yield, many other levers exist in order to reduce the production cost.
 
In this PV Technology roadmap report, we describe all the different aspects linked to production cost reduction: from cell structure innovations to modification of manufacturing processes. We in fact describe all the existing technologies: From those developed by the University of New South Wales (UNS W), to the metal wrap through (MWT) concept developed by the ECN and industrialized with Solland, to the new emitter wrap through (EWT) technology being developed by Bosh Solar.
 
Conventional crystalline silicon cells could bump up against their theoretical maximum efficiency of 29% as soon as 2020. Sanyo Electric Co. Ltd., for instance, demonstrated ~23% efficiency with a 10cm² R&D unit of its heterojunction with intrinsic thin layer (HIT ) cells last year.
 
It figures that thinner surface contacts, better transparent conductors, and lower defect density can improve performance by several more percentage points, to likely get commercial efficiency up to about as close as practical to the theoretical limit within about ten years.
 
COMPANY INDEX

Abound Solar, Advent Solar, AMAT, Antec Solar, Arendi, Auria Solar, Bosh Solar, Canon Anelva, Centrotherm, Day 4 Energy, ECN, Energo Solar, EPV, E-Ton, Evergreen Solar, First Solar, Flexcell, Fraunhofer, Georgia Tech, GET, Heliosphera, IMEC, Innovalight, Intevac, Inventux, Kalixo, Kaneka, Kyocera, Mitsubishi, Nanogram, Nedo, NREL, Oerlikon, Optomec, Philips Miplaza, Photovoltech, Rena, Rofin, Roth and Rau, Sandia National Lab, Schmalz, Schmid, Schott, Semitool, Sharp, SiGen, Solland, Solyndra, Sunfilm, SunPower, SunTech Power, Synova, Toyo Advanced Technologies, Ulvac, UniSolar, University of Konstanz, UNSW, Veeco, Von Ardenne, Xjet.

KEY FEATURES OF THE STUDY
 
The objectives of this report are:

To provide market trends on module price, installations breakdown by technology, production capacity utilization
 
To provide key technical insights about future technology trends and Challenges
 
To provide a deep understanding of new improvements that will occur with the current C-Si cell design: emitter profile optimization, fine line metallization, front and rear surface passivation layer optimization and a better surface structuring.
 
WHO SHOULD BUY

Marketing executives will find key figures and concepts for their strategic plan and product offer. Technical managers and directors will find a complete description on the PV manufacturing processes evolution in order to find new business opportunities either in the wafer-based or thin-film markets. who should buy

TABLE OF CONTENTS

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
 
PV OFFER: MARKET DESCRIPTION AND FORECAST
Description of the technologies - Family of materials
Efficiency / Development status by technology– 2008-2010 situation
Efficiency / Production cost- Early 2010 situation
Fab capacity utilization by technology
Breakdown by technology
Overview of efficiency potentials
 
PV DEMAND EVOLUTION
Mid-term forecasts up to 2013

CONCLUSIONS
 Wafer-based technology:
 Requirements for higher efficiencies
 Cell structure evolution
 - Emitter profile optimization
 - Passivation
 - Passivated cells development Roadmap
 - Identified Players
 Manufacturing Technology Cluster Roadmap
 Thin-Film technologies - Cell structure
 Equipment providers and proprietary technology based manufacturers
 Identified player
 
PV TECHNOLOGY ROADMAP: STRATEGIES TO REDUCE PRODUCTION COST
 Moore’s Law?
 Price reduction - impact of raw material
 Cost per Watt ratio
 Major levers
 Cost breakdown
 
DEVELOPMENT TRENDS ON C-SI CELLS
 Introduction
 Standard cell
 Passivated emitter cell
 Metal wrap through cell
 Emitter Wrap through cell
 Heterojunction with intrinsic thin layer cell
 Interdigitated back-junction cell
 Advanced Cell Concept Production
 Examples with Solland, Bosh or Stiebel
 New Manufacturing Steps
 Metallization
 Dopant Diffusion
 Silicon Structuring
 New Manufacturing Technologies
 Thin wafers
 NI L
 Inkjet
 
DEVELOPMENT TRENDS IN THIN FILM SOLAR CELLS
Breakdown by technology
Amorphous Silicon (a-Si)
Tandem (a-Si/μ-Si)
Cadmium-telluride (CdTe)
Copper indium gallium (di)selenide (CIGS )
New manufacturing technologies
Transparent Interlayer
Electrodes structuring
- Example of Nano-imprint lithography
 
SPECIFIC PROCESSES/POTENTIAL GAME CHANGERS