: Solar equipment biz to grow tenfold
: http://www.eetimes.com/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=175802938
Updated: Solar equipment biz to grow tenfold
Mark LaPedus
EE Times
(01/09/2006 8:34 H EST)
HALF MOON BAY, Calif. — The advent of next-generation factories for
solar-cell production is expected to provide new and major growth
opportunities for equipment and materials suppliers, according to an
executive at SunPower Corp.
In total, the solar equipment market is projected to jump tenfold from $1
billion in 2010 to $10 billion by 2020, said Richard Swanson, president and
chief technology officer for solar-cell maker SunPower, during a keynote
address at the Industry Strategy Symposium (ISS) event here on Monday (Jan.
9).
This presents major opportunities for tool suppliers in several segments,
such as solar die saws, diffusion furnaces, etchers, screen writers, and
others. The solar equipment market is dominated by smaller, niche-oriented
vendors, it was noted.
Solar-cell providers are in production or building next-generation 150- and
200-mm factories, which cost about $100 million. These factories are
highly-automated “autolines” that produce from 200- to 500-megawatts per
year, Swanson said.
Each factory could produce 70-to-180 million wafers a year, or roughly
8,000-to-20,000 wafers per hour. The capital cost for a solar-cell plant is
projected to be around $0.50-per-watt, although the industry is attempting to
spend “half of that,” he said.
However, after sizzling growth in recent times, the solar energy market is
projected to dim and “hit the wall” for panel, equipment and materials
vendors in 2006, warned an analyst.
The projected slowdown in the solar market for 2006 is mainly due to ongoing
and severe shortages of polysilicon, one of the key materials used for making
solar cells, said Jesse Pichel, an analyst with Piper Jaffray Inc., an
investment banking firm.
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