Regarding production capacity of modules, Yole pointed out that Germany, Spain, USA and China are the four most dynamic areas. For the three first countries, investments were driven by local demand and necessity to reduce logistic costs by encapsulating the modules close to the installation zone.

China has the highest production capacity of modules and will reach 3GW by the end of 2008. Taking advantage of low labor cost, Chinese manufacturers have been able to improve their competitiveness and expand their fabs.

Japan still has the second largest module production capacity but did not increase it from 2007 to 2008.

Thin film industry landscape will drastically change in the next two years

Yole estimates the global capacity of thin films to be 2.5GW in 2008. This capacity is lower than the 10GW for wafer based technology, but the growth rate is much higher. Pushed by turnkey fab suppliers, the typical size of thin film projects jumped from 25MW in 2006 to 60-80MW in 2007 and to 500-1,000MW in 2008. For 2010, Gaetan Rull expects a minimum of 7GW of installed thin film production capacity.

The large majority of those projects will be located in Asia. Japan has a strong know how in PV thin film technology and the main established players are located there. Taiwan and Korea will benefit from their experience in flat panel display manufacturing and many industrial companies have advanced projects in the solar field.

Yole is now following over 130 projects in thin film technologies. All will not succeed but many players should reach production in 2008-2009. With such a dynamic field, the thin film industry landscape will be drastically modified over the next three years.

Next step: Equipment and material

Equipment and material needs are very different between the two main PV technologies and are even different between two companies manufacturing the same technology. Yole’s mission is to translate investments in solar fabs into market data for equipment and material suppliers. As discussed before, the solar industry is heading in directions that were not expected a few years ago, the consequences of these moves might be an unexpected large demand in specific materials and/or requirements for innovation in equipment. For these suppliers, anticipating these changes and remaining nimble will be keys to success.

PV Fab Database 2008:

Information and analysis presented in this article are extracted from Yole’s “PV Fab Database 2008”. Yole releases its PV Fab database in May 2008. Updated daily, this database covers the entire PV industry value chain and describes 560 manufacturing plants. Yole’s PV Fab Database is used by numerous industrial companies and analysts worldwide for direct business applications.

For more information please send an e-mail to David Jourdan(jourdan@yole.fr)

About Yole Developpement:

Yole Développement (www.yole.fr) is a market research and strategy consulting company covering the following fields: Photovoltaic, MEMS, Compound Semiconductor, Microfluidics, 3D IC and Nano materials For more information on our PV activities, please contact Gaetan Rull (rull@yole.fr) who is heading the Photovoltaic Team.