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With solar roots stretching back to the days of Sputnik, a stint running the US photovoltaics program in the late 1970s during the Carter administration, his many years editing PV News, and operating the PV Energy Systems consultancy of late, Paul Maycock's institutional memory is as long as anyone in the field. Although he talked about some of his early experiences (did you know the US government's PV budget, in a dollar-to-dollar comparison, was more in 1980 than it is now?), most of his late-afternoon keynote at this year's IntertechPira PV Summit in San Diego focused on his take on the present and immediate future of the PV energy conversion arena.

Maycock is bullish on PV becoming "fully economical for select grid-connected applications--residential, commercial, and institutional--by 2012" in many places around the globe, at a cost between $3 and $3.50 per installed watt. He sees crystalline-silicon (c-Si)reaching 20% conversion efficiencies and 30-year lifetimes, and TFPV on both flexible substrates and glass topping 12% efficiencies and 25-year lifetimes by 2012-2014. He reminisced that a forecast he made in 1985 predicted that c-Si would become economical by 2010, but the recent polysilicon shortage threw his timeline off track.

As for very-high-efficiency III-V concentrator PV, he thinks it will hit 40% or better cell effiencies and 30% overall, with installed costs below $3 per installed watt generating electricity at about 8 cents per kWh by 2015 (and possibly less), although he reminded the audience that CPV's applications are pretty much limited to arid and semiarid climes where there's ample direct solar radiation.

He sees the industry growing to over 16 GW per year by 2015, and that the thin-film PV market share (he's especially keen on cadmium-telluride [CdTe] and advanced microcrystalline amorphous-silicon techs, not so keen on copper-indium-gallium [di]selenide [CIGS] or organics) will expand from its current 10% to about 30% of the total by 2015. The manufacturing equipment sector, now around $2 billion, will continue its blazing 40% compound annual growth rate, he believes.

On the manufacturing front, Maycock predicted that by that ubiquitous 2015 timeframe, production costs for all PV options will be driven down to below a buck per watt, well below the current averages of $1.60 per watt for capital expenditures and total costs (tools, materials, facilities, etc.) in the $2.25 to $2.50 per watt range using a 100-MW factory as a model. Thin film in particular will reach costs below 80 cents per watt, he predicts.

Butting up against his time limit and the impending cocktail reception, Maycock very quickly went through what turned out to be two of his more interesting slides. The first table showed module cost/price calculated with a 40% gross product margin. The average "factory profitable price," about $2.50/$3.75 in 2006, should be pared to $1.50/$2.50 by 2010 and $1.25/$2.20 by 2015. The high end of the scale will be monocrystalline silicon, at $1.40 per manufactured module watt to be sold at $2.20, with CdTe at the opposite end of the spectrum, at 65 cents and $1.25, respectively.

He didn't have a chance to explain his supply-demand forecast before fielding questions from the floor. But a look at the table reveals a predicted continuation of the industry's breathless growth curve.

Polysilicon supply for the solar sector should leave the recent capacity crunch in the industry's rear-view mirror, more than doubling between 2008 and 2010, from 41,202 to 85,477 metric tons, which is the module equivalent (at 83%) of 3,883 MW to 8,986 MW over the period, according to Maycock's calculations. In terms of TFPV modules, the increase in supply will more than triple over the next three years, from 1,056 MW to 3,775 MW. The combined forecast finds module supplies pushing from 4,939 MW this year to well past the 10K mark--12,361 MW--by 2010.

Several attendees kept the speaker on his toes during the Q&A (although most questioners ignored instructions from conference producer Anneke Mueller to state their name and affiliation--making it harder to suss out the possible hidden commercial agendas behind certain queries). Highlights included Maycock citing new high-end, gallium arsenide and gallium phosphide concentrator cells as probably being "the only option for reaching 6 to 7 cents per watt."

He also stated his belief that labor costs for installation are the biggest variable, and that one constant has been that organic PV has been coming for 20 years and still won't be able to compete in another 10 years with the known TFPV approaches--except for certain small, niche applications.

As for CIGS, not exactly his favorite thin-film flavor, he doesn't believe more than two or three companies among the 24 current players will be left standing, once things shake out in a few years.

With final zingers like those from Maycock, the audience left in good spirits toward the spirits (OK, so it was only beer and wine), the wit and wisdom of a true industry pioneer still resonating in their ears.