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Strategies & Market Trends : The New Economy and its Winners

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To: Eric who wrote (46540)	11/13/2008 11:19:31 AM
From: Eric	of 57684

I just wanted to comment on what has happened in the PV business the last year. We have seen some very big changes in this space over the last year. Up until about January of this year the clear leader in producing power cheaply with PV's was FSLR. They had a commanding lead that the Silicon based panels couldn't touch since they could generate electricity for less than half the cost of a Si based panel. Now that has been blown out of the water as a result of the world economic crisis. The price of Si in the finished form of wafers (or cells) is finally crashing. One of my concerns with thin film was the efficiency. FSLR was my top pick two years ago until just recently. As costs per watt have dropped the big fear I had was that eventually Si based panels would drop in cost per watt. Those of us who have worked with this stuff for years wondered when the two technologies would meet on price. A large number of us didn't think it would happen until sometime after 2010 but the worlds economic situation has speeded up the process. Some of us knew there would be a shakeout but none of us expected it to happen so soon. The critical takeaway is what I call the "footprint cost". In other words...what does it cost to install a panel on a fixed amount of space? Right now for comparison SPWRA's panels cost roughly 1/2 to mount anywhere per watt vs thin film. Their BOS costs for mounting and wiring up are 1/2 of what FSLR's are per watt! As a result if you want to build any sized system, Si based panels cannot be beat, especially SPWR's. In the equation above I have not included the cost of Real Estate. If I did the advantage to Si over thin film would be even greater. The deck chairs just got rearranged courtesy of the economy.

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