Crystalline silicon solar module manufacturing cost is analysed, from feedstock to final product, regarding the equipment, labour, materials, yield losses and fixed cost contributions. Data provided by European industrial partners are used to describe a reference technology and to obtain its cost breakdown. The analysis of the main cost drivers allows to define new generation technologies suitable to reduce module cost towards the short-term goal of 1 s per watt-peak. This goal roughly corresponds with the cost level needed to enable 'grid parity': the situation solar electricity becomes competitive with retail electricity. The new technologies are described and their costs are analysed. Cost reductions due to scale effects in production are also assessed for next generation manufacturing plants with capacities in the range of several hundreds of megawatts to one gigawatt of module power per year, which are to come in the near future. The combined effects of technology development and economies of scale bring the direct manufacturing costs of wafer-based crystalline silicon solar modules down into the range of 0Á9-1Á3 s per watt-peak, according to current insights and information (the range results from differences between technologies as well as from uncertainties per technology).
The traditional polysilicon processes should be refined when addressing the low energy consumption requirement for the production of solar grade silicon. This paper addresses the fluid dynamic conditions required to deposit polysilicon in the traditional Siemens reactor. Analytical solutions for the deposition process are presented, providing information on maximizing the rate between the amount of polysilicon obtained and the energy consumed during the deposition process. The growth rate, deposition efficiency, and power-loss dependence on the gas velocity, the mixture of gas composition, the reactor pressure, and the surface temperature have been analyzed. The analytical solutions have been compared to experimental data and computational solutions presented in the literature. At atmospheric pressure, the molar fraction of hydrogen at the inlet should be adjusted to the range of 0.85-0.90, the gas inlet temperature should be raised within the interval of 673 and 773 K, and the gas velocity should reach the Reynolds number 800. The resultant growth rate will be between 6 and 6.5 m min −1 . Operation above atmospheric pressure is strongly recommended to achieve growth rates of 20 m min −1 at 6 atm. © 2008 The Electrochemical Society. ͓DOI: 10.1149/1.2902338͔ All rights reserved. The strong photovoltaic ͑PV͒ market growth relies on crystalline silicon, using highly purified silicon as raw material, which is referred to as polysilicon. Traditionally, polysilicon for the solar industry has been obtained from the microelectronics industry, using off-spec material or the excess capacity of polysilicon producers. But the tremendous growth of the PV industry has produced a rapid change in the situation: while in 2000, PV only demanded 10% of the polysilicon, in 2005, PV demand surpassed that of the microelectronic industry, in the range of 15.000 t, 1 and the global demand exceeded the production capacity. Nevertheless, the silicon shortage that threatened PV industry is being overcome. This is resultant from initiatives taken by the polysilicon and the PV industry to keep on growing. Optimization of the purification process to address solar cell requirements must also be pursued in order to reduce the cost of the material as much as possible. For the moment, the consolidated route in the market to produce polysilicon is based on the synthesis and purification of silanes ͓monosilane ͑MS͒ or trichlorosilane ͑TCS͔͒, and their subsequent reduction in a chemical vapor deposition ͑CVD͒ reactor to solid Si. Almost 77% of the polysilicon produced worldwide is currently obtained from trichlorosilane in a CVD reactor known as a Siemens reactor. 2The Siemens reactor consists of a chamber where several highpurity silicon slim rods are heated by an electric current flowing through them, and polysilicon is deposited on the seed rods through the thermal decomposition of silanes in a hydrogen environment. The deposition features depend on the gas flux, and therefore, the fluid mechanics regime has to be analyzed profoundly to achieve ...
ARTICLE INFO ABSTRACT Keywords:Cost assessment Crystalline silicon Silicon feedstockThe impact of the use of new (solar grade) silicon feedstock materials on the manufacturing cost of wafer-based crystalline silicon photovoltaic modules is analyzed considering effects of material cost, efficiency of utilisation, and quality. Calculations based on data provided by European industry partners are presented for a baseline manufacturing technology and for four advanced wafer silicon technologies which may be ready for industrial implementation in the near future. Iso-cost curves show the technology parameter combinations that yield a constant total module cost for varying feedstock cost, silicon utilisation, and cell efficiency. A large variation of feedstock cost for different production processes, from near semiconductor grade Si (30€/kg) to upgraded metallurgical grade Si (10€/kg), changes the cost of crystalline silicon modules by 11% for present module technologies or by 7% for advanced technologies, if the cell efficiency can be maintained. However, this cost advantage is completely lost if cell efficiency is reduced, due to quality degradation, by an absolute 1.7% for present module technology or by an absolute 1.3% for advanced technologies.
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