NDLI: The capital intensity of photovoltaics manufacturing: barrier to scale and opportunity for innovation

Content Provider	Royal Society of Chemistry (RSC)
Author	Basore, Paul A. Powell, Douglas M. Woodhouse, Michael Fu, Ran Buonassisi, Tonio Horowitz, Kelsey
Copyright Year	2015
Abstract	Using a bottom-up cost model, we assess the impact of initial factory capital expenditure (capex) on photovoltaic (PV) module minimum sustainable price (MSP) and industry-wide trends. We find capex to have two important impacts on PV manufacturing. First, capex strongly influences the per-unit MSP of a c-Si module: we calculate that the capex-related elements sum to 22% of MSP for an integrated wafer, cell, and module manufacturer. This fraction provides a significant opportunity to reduce MSP toward the U.S. DOE SunShot module price target through capex innovation. Second, a combination of high capex and low margins leads to a poor financial rate of return, which limits the growth rate of PV module manufacturing capacity. We quantify the capex of Czochralski-based crystalline silicon (c-Si) PV manufacturing, summing to 0.68 $/WaCap ($ per annual production capacity in watts, $year/W) from wafer to module and 1.01 $/WaCap from polysilicon to module. At a sustainable operating margin determined by the MSP methodology for our bottom-up scenario, we calculate the sustainable growth rate of PV manufacturing capacity to be ∼19% annually – below the historical trend of ∼50% annually. We conclude with a discussion of innovation opportunities to reduce the capex of PV manufacturing through both incremental and disruptive process innovation with c-Si, platform innovations, and financial approaches.
Starting Page	3395
Ending Page	3408
Page Count	14
File Format	HTM / HTML PDF
ISSN	17545692
Volume Number	8
Issue Number	12
Journal	Energy & Environmental Science
DOI	10.1039/c5ee01509j
Language	English
Publisher	Royal Society of Chemistry
Access Restriction	Subscribed
Subject Keyword	MSP Solar panel Wafer Crystalline silicon Polycrystalline silicon Operating margin Sustainable growth rate
Content Type	Text
Resource Type	Article
Subject	Environmental Chemistry Pollution Renewable Energy, Sustainability and the Environment Nuclear Energy and Engineering

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