U.S. market research firm NanoMarkets released projections indicate that the global thin film solar cell market in 2015 will reach 14,000,000,000 U.S. dollars. The company in July 2008 had been forecast in 2015 to more than 20,000,000,000 U.S. dollars. Down the reasons for the rapid deterioration of the economic environment. NanoMarkets predicted that film solar cell market will continue to grow, but the downturn in the construction industry, and other factors, in 2009 and 2010 the growth rate will narrow.
NanoMarkets thin film solar cells listed in the market uncertainties, including: As the fall in oil prices, the use of solar energy as an alternative to the overall weaker demand; due to the shortage of raw silicon solutions to the use of silicon than the crystalline silicon solar cells less as a selling point of Thin film solar cell growth started to slow down; because of the deteriorating business environment, leading to solar cell manufacturers to reduce investment in research and development. To this end, the company forecast in 2009 to slow growth in the market in 2010, once again entered the track of rapid growth until 2011.
In the long run, lightweight, low-cost thin-film solar cell market will grow, NanoMarkets predicted that the size of its market in 2011 will reach 4.6 billion U.S. dollars in 2015 will expand to 140 million. The future demand for catalytic CIGS solar cells will be mass production early in 2011.
In 2015 the market size of thin film solar cell breakthrough 14,000,000,000 U.S. dollars
Solar energy conversion: European project to break the record of efficiency
Scientists funded project to develop FULLSPECTRUM photovoltaic power generation multi-junction solar cells can convert 39.7 percent of the sunlight energy to electrical energy, which is the highest ever in Europe as a percentage.
Such large-scale deployment of photovoltaic systems is the main obstacle to the electricity production costs are too high, because the system needs a huge manufacturing cost of the project team is developing more and more low-cost and highly efficient battery.
At present, the traditional silicon photovoltaic cells can only make the conversion of about 17% of the solar spectrum. FULLSPECTRUM multi-junction solar cell can capture more solar energy, because it's different from the composition of the materials, including gallium, phosphorous, indium and germanium. However, these multi-junction solar cells are expensive and only applied in space. However, the costs could be considerable reduction through them on a special panel and a lens in focusing on solar cells. These can focus on to achieve much higher than the natural flow of solar energy 1,000 times, which is one of their research projects.
