Beschreibung:
In the past years, the yearly world market growth rate for Photovoltaics was an average of more than 40%, which makes it one of the fastest growing industries at present. Business analysts predict the market volume to increase to € 40 billion in 2010 and expect rising profit margins and lower prices for consumers at the same time. Today PV is still dominated by wafer based Crystalline Silicon Technology as the "working horse" in the global market, but thin films are gaining market shares. For 2007 around 12% are expected. The current silicon shortage and high demand has kept prices higher than anticipated from the learning curve experience and has widened the windows of opportunities for thin film solar modules. Current production capacity estimates for thin films vary between 3 and 6 GW in 2010, representing a 20% market share for these technologies. Despite the higher growth rates for thin film technologies compared with the industry average, Thin Film Photovoltaic Technologies are still facing a number of challenges to maintain this growth and increase market shares.