Beam me up Scotty

This Week in Solar: Thin-Film Players Steal Spotlight

The bottom line to commerical rooftop solar is electrical production per unit area. Thin film requires about double the space as silicon for a like amount of production. Unless solyndra has somehow leap-frogged that long time spatial technlogical issue, it's hard to figure what's causing all the excitment. What would help their cause is a comparion of a typical 1000 sq ft area fitted with solyndra collectors compared to standard power silicon, high powered silicon or perhaps even double sided panels from sanyo. I'm thinking the spatial problem still exists but solyndra has an easier mounting system for flat roofs especially regarding wind. It's important to note that differentiator but to separate it from wishful thinking and other guesswork.

Solar: The Clouds May Be Parting

Any chinese mfg product benefits due to the US dollar - renminbi artificially set exchange. This simply cannot continue because the valuation not only effects US shipments but those of other countries with the dollar as reserves. Ain't fair and we all know it and soon enough, the dollar will devalue and the chinese made products will become higher priced not just for the US but also other developed economies. These chinese companies ought to be setting up ops in the US as a hedge and THEN they are probably worth acquiring.

Solar Power Thin-Film Developers Feel Besieged

The problem is the same as it's always been - nearly double the space for thin film for an almost equal amount of production as Si. The Solyndra differentiator has nothing much to do with thin film - they've eased the 'installation debacle' with non-penetration, easy to 'place' modules. However, they still have much of the capacity per unit area problem as others and one has to suspect their backlog has some serious risk associated with it at this point. There are plenty of differentiators for thin film, however. And if the vendors look more to those than simply competing with Si, they will do well. Most need to re-read Marketing Myopia.

Why Is First Solar So Far Ahead of the Competition?

Thin film solar still has the relative problem of requiring about twice the physical space per watt as mono/poly silicon based panels. Yet still, for roofspaces at least, the amount of labor and mounting fixtures remains the same. This means, that installed, the dollar per panel watt being $ 1.00, doesn't carry over to 'total' cost of systems. What'll help is using acres and square miles of land filled with these panels by utilities who now have access to the ITC. This will require more transmission investment which should feed into higher regulated prices for electricity. And, instead of having tons of high tension lines and utility poles covering the countryside, we'll now also have huge, fenced off pieces of land with their newly constructed transformers and new transmission lines.
Rigid silicon panel prices will drop significantly with increased supply over the next decade and can more efficiently produce watts than thin film, by using and monetizing rooftops. It won't be the quick fix for utilities and state regulatory departments with their RPS targets but it is the right way to go. Thin film has many other better applications than competing heads-up with more powerful rigid silicon based panels.