Thin Film PV

The graveyard dedicated to CIGS solar thin panel producers is a crowded place, as over-funded and underachieving companies succumb to intense competition and a failed ability to understand technical challenges and scale quick enough. But there is light in the horizon, according to some.

Former industry darlings like SoloPower, AQT Solar and Solyndra made room for Nanosolar in the CIGS cemetery this summer when the company’s 10-year run, funded by $400m in venture capital, ended with a selloff of its assets. There will certainly be more failures in the CIGS market, as funding and scale will remain difficult to obtain.

But some are not ready to write the obituary for CIGS thin panel technology. LUX Research, a provider of strategic advice emerging technologies, expects the market for solar installations utilising CIGS thin panel technology to exceed $2.3bn by 2015. Fatima Toor, a senior analyst with LUX, projects that the market for CIGS solar technology based panels will nearly double to 2.3 gigawatts.

Toor also notes that the overall cost to produce CIGS (short for copper-indium-gallium-selenium) thin panel solar is expected to decrease because of improvements in process yields and module efficiencies.

Promise of thin film

“The promise of thin film PV is still very much alive,” says Alan C. Goodrich, an analyst with the National Renewable Energy Laboratory. “For one, technologies within the thin-film portfolio are able to be scaled up with a lower initial capital cost. These technologies are also able to provide a relatively streamlined supply chain that is less prone to supply-demand imbalances, and there are often enhanced power production benefits compared to some silicon technologies, especially in usually cloudy coastal conditions where population densities are greatest.”

While the CIGS sector continues to sort itself out from the dark cloud created by a rush of investors and the failed efficiency and manufacturing promises made by many manufacturers, bright spots are emerging in the CIGS sector.

Solar-Frontier, generally regarded as the industry leader, says that its production facility in Japan is operating at near capacity since the start of 2013. The Kunitomi plant is expected to produce close to its 900MW capacity in 2013.

“The solar market is still in a shake out period where extreme price competition pulls focus away from important criteria such as quality, reliability, and performance in real-world conditions,” says Charles Pimentel, chief operating officer at Solar Frontier, which was founded in 2007 and is owned by Showa Shell, a unit of Shell Oil.

New standards

“However, the market is increasingly aware of the difference between actual energy costs and solar panel prices, and the built-in cost competitiveness and ecological benefits of CIS are why we believe that it will become the new standard for affordable energy performance.”

Pimentel says that there is a greater understanding that the return on investment for a PV system is actually based on its cost per kilowatt-hour accounting. “This is the key advantage,” he says. “CIS systems generate more kWh per kWp installed than those of other thin film technologies. At up to 13.8%, our CIS modules have among the highest mass production efficiencies of any commercial thin film product.”

There have been other positive developments in the industry. Solibro, a German firm acquired by Chinese solar giant Hanergy in 2012, announced in October that it has achieved a conversion efficiency of 18.7% in a lab produced CIGS sub-module (5x5cm2), one of the highest reported for CIGS technology and anther sign that technology innovation might allow thin-film to gain on silicon-based options. Solibro and its parent company are expected to commercialise the sub-module production process, although no timeline was provided.

Consumers to the rescue? 

Finally, CIGS thin film technologies are showing up in more and more consumer-based products, a major win for the technology. This month US retail giant Walmart started carrying a series of solar device chargers produced by Ascent Solar Technologies, a manufacturer of CIGS thin-film photovoltaic modules. Ascent integrates the modules into its EnerPlex series of consumer products, which now includes its personal solar chargers.

The company says that its line of solar chargers is enabled by the flexible, rugged, lightweight and thin form factor of its proprietary CIGS solar cells, which are capable of charging most smart phones in under five hours with a 3-watt output.

“Ascent’s consumer brand, EnerPlex continues to deliver rugged and innovative solutions to consumers who require the absolute best in portable charging solutions, whether they are working in a remote oil field or summiting a treacherous peak,” says Robert Meck, Ascent Solar's VP of product development.

Power of partnerships

Ascent's partnership with Walmart is certainly strategic and good news for CIGS. Toor says that partnerships are key for the survival of solar start-ups like Ascent, which has not reported a positive balance sheet since 2006.

“From a technology perspective, smart phones are already a high end product unlike conventional PV applications,” she says. “Therefore, in the consumer electronics space there is more room for high cost solar products, such as flexible CIGS.”

For now, it seems like CIGS thin panel solar technology may be easing off that treacherous peak that Meck refers to and onto more stable ground. But time will tell.