Can silicon photovoltaics be a cottage industry?

Silicon Solar photovoltaic (PV) industry has maintained sustained growth rates over last 15 years and the future outlook appears to be even brighter considering continuously rising oil prices and ensuing environmental concerns. Most of this growth has been confined to economically advanced countries, tied to grid-connected applications based on government subsidies. In order to meet rising demands, the PV manufacturing sector has increasingly adopted automation to increase throughputs. This has come at the expense of very high capital equipment costs, which has significantly raised the entry barrier for new entrants into this critical industry. We investigate an alternate approach aimed at solar PV cost reduction by tailoring the technology to the socio-economic culture of the society. Such an approach must stress development of PV-based cottage industry. As the first step in this direction, we developed cottage-industry based business model aimed at manufacturing of 110 W PV modules in a pilot plan in Terengganu, Malaysia with an estimated capacity of ∼ 1 MW/year. Almost entire equipment and manufacturing processes were developed with process and performance yields comparable to any automated operation. Except for the laminator, all other equipment was manufactured in house. The solar cell and modules were purchased from vendors.