Solar Module Sales Price of $1 per Watt no Longer Theory

MUNICH, Germany and ROTTERDAM, Netherlands, April 7 /PRNewswire/ — “In
2010, our objective is to reach a selling price for solar modules of $1 per
Watt,” says Lynn Sha, Vice President of Chinese manufacturer QS Solar. In
other words, it will become possible in 2010 to produce solar energy cheaper
than the cost of electricity from the grid (“grid parity”), and this is
without subsidies.

This revolutionary price level could be sufficient to create sustainable
growth in the solar energy market (PV) even without the availability of any
government incentives. “The solar industry has always claimed that its goal
was to attain this level of $1 per Watt. Reaching this benchmark will be the
turning point from which markets will emerge and grow without any government
aid. It is the start of the solar future,” says Edwin Koot, CEO of
SolarPlaza, the global, independent solar energy platform.

Module prices are currently under pressure. Last year’s enormous growth
of the solar industry and market by more than 100% was caused by a generous
feed-in tariff in Spain. Many new companies started production of solar
modules. This year, support in Spain has been decreased and capped. “This
could not have come at a more dramatic moment. The simultaneous loss of Spain
as a major market, the inevitable industry oversupply, and the financial
crisis have pushed down module prices since Q3 last year,” says Koot. “Good
for customers, challenging for the industry.”

QS Solar started production of its amorphous silicon thin-film modules
last year. “We will bring down the sales price to our goal of $0.75/Wp
through the continuous expansion of our production capacity and process
optimization.” The company currently has 3 production lines with an installed
capacity of 95 MegaWatts, and it plans to increase another 4 lines by 2009,
which will lead to a total capacity of 235 MW by next year.

The $1 per Watt level is already sufficient to achieve grid parity in
many markets. A lower level might not even be needed to serve an infinite
global market potential for photovoltaic solar energy.

Lynn Sha and CEOs from the world’s leading PV companies (such as Q-Cells,
Suntech Power, Applied Materials, and Akeena Solar) will be discussing the
above topics at “The Solar Future” conference organized by SolarPlaza on May
26th in Munich.

About SolarPlaza:

SolarPlaza, based in Rotterdam, Netherlands, Solarplaza.com is the
independent global platform for knowledge, trade and events for the
photovoltaic solar energy (PV) industry.

For more information, please visit http://www.solarplaza.com

SOURCE SolarPlaza