April 2012

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BIPV Encapsulation Markets Preview

The PV market is undergoing dramatic change as the industry transitions from one of generous subsidies to one with dwindling subsidies, dramatically reduced prices, reduced margins, and anticipated massive consolidation. As the PV module market shifts towards a commodity business model with associated mergers, and many players are weeded out of the panel area, which dominates the overall solar industry, there are many in the industry looking for new business models with greater opportunities for high margin growth. 

NanoMarkets believes that one of the areas of high growth for solar PV is in building-integrated photovoltaics (BIPV).This new wave of BIPV products represents an attractive opportunity for new encapsulation materials.  The current materials for flexible modules are relatively expensive to manufacture compared to the glass used in rigid modules. However, for BIPV applications, where product lifetimes are 20-30 years, they represent a good value proposition for high-end applications today, and will have much wider appeal as costs come down.  The larger opportunities will be in the newest generation of materials, which promise to reduce costs without reducing product lifetimes.

The Coming of Age of the DSC Market

NanoMarkets believes that 2012 will be the year that dye sensitized cell (DSC) photovoltaics grows into itself and begins to capitalize on the available opportunities despite overall weakness in the PV market.  In this article we examine a few of the factors that the industry and interested investors may be ignoring.  

March 2012

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Reexamining Silver In Photovoltiacs

Over the past several years the photovoltaics (PV) market has been the single largest consumer of silver printing pastes, beating out even the big traditional markets like printed circuit boards and polymer thick-film membrane switches. But as the PV sector enters a period of flat or moderate growth in the next couple of years, the industry remains highly cost sensitive, and government subsidies are waning. Meanwhile, the ongoing shift in market share toward thin-film PV (TFPV) is changing the nature of the addressable market for silver materials in PV.   

There is some good news, however as most of the opportunities center on providing new silver-based products that help the panel makers reduce manufacturing costs.  Examples are: new silver printing pastes with reduced silver loadings that do not sacrifice performance; new printable silver materials that enable the fabrication of finer resolution silver traces; and new nanosilver-based options that enable low-cost, solution-processable and/or printable fabrication of transparent front electrodes.

February 2012

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Changes in the PV Market that May Influence the Adoption of Smart Coatings

NanoMarkets continues to believe that there are opportunities for commercialization of smart coatings in the photovoltaics (PV) sector, even though the PV market is quite different today than it was just a year ago, both from an economic and a political perspective.

Changes in the Photovoltaics Market for Transparent Conductors

NanoMarkets' eight-year forecasts suggest that the market for transparent conductors (TCs) in both inorganic and organic thin-film photovoltaics (TFPV) applications will be about $90 million in 2012 and grow at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of over 30 percent to a value of over $635 million by the end of the forecast period in 2019. NanoMarkets anticipates this growth despite the current difficult overall environment for PV, in which government subsidies are under threat and in which there are huge pressures to reduce TFPV costs to make TFPV competitive with c-Si PV and with other sources of energy in general.

The Aesthetic and Cost Promise of BIPV

Building-integrated photovoltaics (BIPV) is one of the biggest hopes for turning PV into a substantial industry that might eventually be self-sustaining without government subsidies.

January 2012

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Changes in PV and What It Means for Transparent Conductors

NanoMarkets anticipates significant challenges to the status quo in the photovoltaics (PV) market in the coming decade. The PV sector as a whole is entering a period of flat or moderate growth in the next couple of years, and the industry remains highly cost sensitive. Meanwhile, the ongoing shift in market share toward thin-film PV (TFPV) is changing the accepted landscape of available PV technologies. This movement, in turn, is causing a shift in demand for transparent conductors (TCs) in PV applications from market-dominant crystalline silicon (c-Si) PV that uses little or no TCs to TFPV that, in most cases, requires the use of high performance TC electrodes.

Reality Check On CIGS PV

After years of results that have been disappointing compared to consensus expectations,  it is high time to take a sober look at the market for CIGS going forward in light of the current state of the technology and competitiveness of CIGS compared to other PV technologies.  Other factors playing into the mix are the likelihood of decreased subsidies for PV going forward in North America and Europe, and the effect of significant increases in known reserves of natural gas, which have lowered and stabilized prices compared to the volatility and high prices seen in the 2007-2008 timeframe.

September 2011

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Konarka and Krupp:  Together At Last

The recent announcement that Konarka Technologies, leader in the organic PV (OPV) space, has teamed with the ThyssenKrupp Steel Europe is a potential game changer for OPV.  Interest in OPV remains strong; new firms, new capacity and new products. Yet that OPV has not fulfilled its early promise is a conclusion that remains inescapable.  It was always understood that OPV would be low efficiency, but this was supposed to be compensated for by low dollars per watt too.  But it hasn’t happened.

July 2011

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The BIPV Value Proposition

Building integrated photovoltaics (BIPV) is a new and dynamic market, with complex sub-markets, and very different market entities pulling diverse BIPV technologies into use. As an extension of the global photovoltaics (PV) market, both large established PV module suppliers as well as small niche architectural firms are trying to push BIPV into the market. Historically, the volumes sold of BIPV products—relative to PV products as a whole—have been low due to both a lack of demand and a lack of dedicated products for the building industry.  However, NanoMarkets believes that the demand for BIPV would have been greater had dedicated products been more widely available.

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