PV technology roadmap: Market and manufacturing considerations

Technology roadmaps are an important tool for all technology arenas and there is increasing activity to develop an ITRS equivalent for PV. This paper makes the following key points: (1) the PV industry has 2 essential differences from the semiconductor industry which must be reflected in the roadmap (2) there are several types of PV roadmaps which provide different perspectives, and (3) this paper suggests that for PV, production volume instead of time is the preferred variable and may lead to better technology forecasts. The example of PV wafer thickness is used to illustrate these points. For the first point, the PV industry differs from semiconductor industry in two fundamental aspects: (1) it is based on market incentives, and is sensitive to policy, and (2) it has a wider spectrum of business models and levels of vertical integration. Both of these aspects necessitate the need to fold in market analysis into any PV roadmap endeavors. For the second point, we propose that there are three types of PV Roadmaps: (1) the “Top´s-Down” (TD) based on high level trajectories such as LCOE reduction for “grid-parity” (2) a Capability roadmap provided by e.g. equipment vendors, and (3) a “Consensus” roadmap based on market surveying, and technical evaluation of the aspects. A further refinement is to have the Consensus roadmap based on production volume instead of time. We develop and discuss the latter in this paper. The methodology is described as well as the comparisons between the other types of roadmaps. The results include a Consensus roadmap for wafer thickness which reflects the various considerations for PV. The production volume trend line is compared and assessed against the other roadmaps. The data support the combined use of both a market sensitive time-based and a production-volume-based roadmap for more accurate projections.