IHS: Solar PV industry to move to new technologies as capital spending returns
17.03.2014IHS Inc. has released a new report which finds that advanced technologies will become more common in solar photovoltaic (PV) manufacturing as equipment investments return during 2014.
The company predicts that manufacturers will transition to newer technologies for mass production “in the near future”, naming diamond wire sawing and n-type substrates among these technologies. It also expects cadmium telluride to continue to dominate thin-film PV.
“Innovative technologies will be atop the agendas of major solar manufacturers globally now that supply and demand has come to closer alignment,” said IHS Analyst for Solar Demand Jon Campos.
“While most experts thought that overcapacity issue would remain significantly longer, the fundamental assumptions made by IHS were that the industry would move toward market equilibrium behind increasing demand in the emerging markets, and that PV manufacturers would turn to advanced technologies to compete with traditional forms of energy production-assumptions that are now coming to fruition.”
IHS predicts that PV industry capital spending will recover to USD 3.4 billion during 2014.
Wafer makers to shift from steel to diamond wire
IHS says that the diamond wire market is particularly promising, and expects wafer makers to begin to transition to this technology in 2014. Diamond wire sawing accounted for only 5.5 GW of wafer slicing in 2013, however IHS expects that usage will grow to 27.2 GW in 2017 and 43.1 GW of installed capacity by 2020.
N-type cells to create growth in mono-c-Si PV
The company also notes that significant research and development is being conducted on n-type silicon, which has higher tolerance to common impurities resulting in high minority carrier lengths. IHS says that n-type crystalline silicon does not suffer from the boron-oxygen-related light induced degradation that is common on p-type silicon produced with the Czochralski method.
IHS expects that n-type production will grow from 5% of the market in 2013 to 32% by 2020. As n-type silicon is mostly a monocrystalline technology, this will also cause an increase in the overall monocrystalline silicon market share.
Source: Solarserver.com