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A recent report by research firm Greentech Media and the Prometheus Institute for Sustainable Development has claimed that global module capacity will grow to 27.6GW – enough to produce 23.7GW of modules – by 2012. The company sees a significant drop in manufacturing costs to below $1.50 per watt for most technologies, while it foresees thin-film production to drop as low as 70 cents per watt.
The report, ‘PV Technology, Production and Cost, 2009 Forecast,’ provides an analysis of global manufacturing capacity, production and costs, encompassing all technologies in the industry. Greentech Media analysed the current marketplace and created supply and demand forecasts for the future of the industry, coming up with a list of companies that they suspect will find the next few years of the economic downturn particularly difficult.
It also sees high-efficiency monocrystalline and low-cost thin-film technologies as the sturdiest and most likely to weather the stormy times ahead, with an amount of uncertainty for the durability of the multicrystalline manufacturers.
"2009 will represent an inflection point in solar," said Travis Bradford, President of the Prometheus Institute. "Strategic decisions can't be made without considering the market impact of every technology with data that holds up in any economic climate. Now, more than ever, is when companies, investors and analysts need rock-solid intelligence to benchmark competitiveness and profitability. This report lets industry stakeholders know exactly how well they stack up against their global competition."
