Solar: Silicon vs. CIGS

Silicon Solar Panel technology is the most dominant material being use these days, but new startups such as Miasolé and Nanosolar showed that a new kind of material, that although being less efficient, is several times cheaper and easier to use in flexible multiple forms. One of these thin film materials is CIGS(Copper Indium Gallium Diselenide)

Then we have a two-year shortage of polysilicon, that will cut the supply needed to feed the grow of more silicon based solar panels.
Thin films (ex. CIGS) has not only the price but the supply needed for enormous growth in the next years, so cheap that we could compare it to the cost of printing ink on paper.

Thin-film production from companies such as Evergreen Solar and Energy Conversion Devices will grow by around 70 percent in 2007, while polysilicon production will grow by 9 percent.

The booming solar industry is in the midst of an argument over which material will become dominant in the future for harvesting sunlight and turning it into electricity.

There is a good and detailed article about this issue over at CNET. You can read it here: Silicon vs. CIGS: With solar energy, the issue is material

posted by IntoBlogs at 7:00 PM