Who Wants to Be Efficient?

by Bill Dodson

Recently a laboratory in the United States announced a breakthrough in thin film PV technology that would increase the efficiency of thin film technologies from about 7% to more than 13%. China has little in the way of its own thin film production facilities as it is, since barriers to entering the market are higher than with crystalline PV cells. Crystalline technologies require a minimum of machinery supported by manual labor, which is relatively cheap in China. Though crystalline silicate is more expensive to come by than the amorphous silicate favored in thin film settings, Chinese manufacturers can ramp up production processes for crystalline PV products more readily than for thin film.

Without home-grown innovation in China in the same vane as the research that has nearly doubled thin-film efficiencies, China will be hard put to be more than a follower. Chinese government policy and government production activity in the renewable energies sector views production of PV products in particular as a race to the bottom. Instead of investing moneys into making more efficient technologies and then charging the domestic and international markets a bit more for the technology investment, Chinese manufacturers are happily churning out lower efficiency products cheaply. As is the case in the Chinese manufacture of toys, shoes, textiles, electronic appliances and other products for which international buyers come to “The Workshop of the World,” China’s goal is conquest of market share in each renewable energies industry. The approach provides Chinese manufacturers with low margins, which they consider are worth the effort as long as they sell copious amounts of the manufactured goods. The orientation is toward short-term gain, not long-term, sustainable profitability.

Chinese manufacturers en masse will adopt production of the new efficiencies when the machinery becomes available to continue flooding markets with products that are at sub-par cost levels that defy economic principal. Improving the world is far from the hearts of Chinese factory owners; improving their bottom lines is.

Further reading: Delft Researcher Modifies Amorphous Silicon Solar Cells Production Production Line to Raise Efficiency

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Image Credit: PV-Tech.org