Over the course of the past decade, the PV manufacturing industry has transitioned from a “cost-reduction era” to a “performance-improvement era”. While some opportunities for minor cost reductions still exist with conventional manufacturing techniques, these are comparatively limited, and in the near term will simply mark the regaining of ground lost due to recent price increases such as those for polysilicon and aluminum.
In comparison, module efficiency is set to increase as the industry moves through future cell technology evolutions. These efficiency increases offer an opportunity to drive down module cost-per-watt and increase performance metrics that drive energy yield. The PV industry is now entering an era where its evolution is largely driven by improvements in performance at acceptable cost, rather than reductions in absolute cost at acceptable performance.
To explore how NexWafe is enabling a revolution in PV wafer manufacturing, the company partnered with ExaWatt, a leading strategic consulting and market research firm in the solar and renewable energy industry. In this white paper, you will learn:
- The current state of the PV manufacturing industry,
- Likely trends in cell technology and wafer manufacturing over the next 5-10 years
- Opportunities and challenges for NexWafe’s EpiNex® process.
After a thorough examination of the PV market, including cell technologies and wafer manufacturing processes, ExaWatt concluded NexWafe’s EpiWafer process offers significant potential for many competitive advantages at a lower manufacturing cost than current technologies.
